


Point of No Return

by squire



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Awkward courting attempts, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Forgiveness, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Ill-advised blow jobs, Kylo Ren needs a hug too, Kylo is a drama queen, Lightside au, M/M, Manipulation, Skywalker Drama, Snoke never existed, This is not how repulsor technology works, though technically Kylo is not on the lightside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14387991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: In a galaxy far far away where Snoke never existed, Ben Solo still manages to make the worst decisions he could. And then some better ones.





	1. Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to frapandfurious for cheering me on with this crazy AU. Also, if anyone asks how I came up with it, I have to admit it involved my daughter, LEGO figures of Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron and a blanket. We'll get to explaining it, I swear!

Kylo’s fingers reflexively tightened around the controls, the leather of his gloves creaking, and he flexed them to relieve the strain, sucking in a breath and letting it out in a controlled exhale. Jumping out of hyperspace in the enemy space always jostled his nerves, no matter how good their intel was.

Nevermind that the intel was perfect, as always. The target, the Resistance Star Cruiser, hovered on the orbit of the gas giant above him, taking up nearly the whole view of the cockpit.

{ _!proximity warning! _ } his astromech chirped over the comm. Kylo was used for his droid to sound alarmed, exasperated, even chiding - all that despite the machine-like quality of Binary - but this was a new. BB-9E sounded  _ tired.  _ There was an un-beeped Binary equivalent of  _ you little shit _ tacked onto the end of the warning, Kylo was sure.

“Hey, I swear this is the plan,” Kylo shot back. They’ve been together through worse. He felt the thrill of danger spreading through him, focusing his senses and speeding up his heartbeat to match the rapid pulse of the ion engines thrumming behind him. The TIE reacted to every twitch to his fingers, seemingly to his every thought. He could feel the buzz of its circuitry like the extension of his own nerves as he raced towards the Resistance flagship.

{ _ Negative; navigation error _ } BB-9E insisted, going as far as projecting the sector map into Kylo’s peripheral vision, Kylo’s TIE Silencer a red dot deep inside the range of the cruiser’s defense canons, the rest of the scout squadron still hidden in the shadow of the planet’s second moon.   

“Exactly,” Kylo muttered, angling his trajectory to get a better line of shot to the hangar opening. He'd caught the Resistance unaware, their shields slow to go up, their laser cannons half-blocking each other out at this close range, what feeble defence they were able to scramble together only grazing Silencer’s deflector shields. Kylo ignored the lines of green fire licking at his tail and swooped in, eyes boring through the tactical projection as if he could actually see his target hidden in the bowels of the ship and guide the missile towards it by a sheer power of will alone.

There it was. The fuel tanks. Kylo imagined how the ship’s hangar would light up in the flaming inferno, all starfighters on the deck exploding one by one as the expanding fireball reached them, and then he pressed down the torpedo launch control without hesitation.

 

_ Five years earlier _

 

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Luke’s words had Ben frozen with one leg still up on the first step of the ladder. The disappointed tone underlying their gentle patience also had the tips of Ben’s ears burn red. He could feel the tingle, grateful for the helmet on his head even in the dark. Even though it wasn’t as if Luke Skywalker couldn’t feel his shame. It was something that just came with Ben by default: shame.

He got back down and turned around, one hand still clasping the ladder. Clinging to it like to a lifeline.

“You told me to calm down,” he tried to defend himself. “You know that I only ever calm down up there.”

“The meditation  _ will _ work but you have to trust it,”  Luke held his own. “You have to weed out the roots of your anger, not to let it burn out like the fuel in my X-wing.”

Ben sighed. “Trust it.” He couldn’t meet his uncle’s - no, his master’s eyes. Trust went both ways.

 

_ “Please, Luke. I don’t know how else… it’s getting out of hand. I can’t give him what he needs.” _

_ Fifteen year old Ben Solo was told numerous times that eavesdropping was bad behaviour. But how else was he going to learn what his mother really thought about him? _

_ “Are you sure becoming a Jedi is what your son needs?” Uncle Luke asked. His earlier joy and light-heartedness at meeting with his sister’s family was gone, dampened by Leia’s request. He didn’t even finish catching up with Ben when Leia dragged him into her private study. _

_ “He needs to learn to control it. You know I can’t… I never trained like you.” _

_ “Control it?” Luke sounded sad. “I do not control it. I understand it. There’s a difference.” _

_ “Well, I never liked it in the first place,” Leia hissed. “But Ben - I just want him safe. With the public revelation about our bloodline...” _

_ Behind the door, Ben squeezed his eyes shut. The news channels were full of it, the greed of the gossip insatiable. Everyone apparently expected him to start killing children all of a sudden. _

_ “May I remind you that Vader had the best Jedi training and yet it didn’t prevent his fall?” Luke pointed out. “The Jedi way is not for everyone. It was not designed to substitute love and understanding.” _

_ Ben leaned against the wall, pressing his hot face against its cool surface. On the other side of it sat two heroes of the Rebel Alliance, neither of whom wanted to have to do anything with him and his outbursts. _

_ “You think this is easy for me?” Leia’s voice held a tone of reproach, strong as ever, before it unexpectedly broke. “He’s my son, Luke, I love him… more than anything.” _

_ “What does Han think about this,” Luke asked quietly after a considerable pause. _

_ Even longer moment of silence passed before Leia replied. “He has… business on Corellia.” _

_ “Jedi training takes years,” Ben heard Luke say and shuddered. He was never away from home longer than a week, even though that home was sometimes just the bundled blanket on the bench around the Dejarik table on the Millenium Falcon. _

_ “This really should be the decision of both of you.” _

_ Ben couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't just cower in the corner and wait for his fate to be determined by genes and other people's convenience. _

_ The next morning, he asked Luke to take him as his apprentice. Begged him to leave as soon as possible. His mother's hurt was only a pitiful satisfaction. He wondered if it would really take years before he'd see his father again. _

_ But the power he'd heard about in the stories… If people were going to fear him anyway, might as well give them a reason, right? _

_ Except that he wasn't good enough, not even his raw talent could make up for everything that was wrong with him, from the start. _

 

“You can’t just cheat your way around things,” Luke berated him when Ben skimped meditation, half-assed his lightsaber forms and attempted to use mind tricks to get a free pass from group sessions.

“You have too much of your father’s heart in you, young Ben Solo,” Luke finally let slip once, irritated once again with Ben’s habit to sneaking out for a few passes through the planet’s asteroid belt whenever his frustration over training would get the better of him. Too careless, too reckless, too impulsive…

Not nearly as powerful as his Grandfather. Just a bit too much like Han Solo.

That night Ben used his powers for deliberate destruction for the first time. He brought down the roof of his hut - on his bed, his unfinished lightsaber, all his belongings - in a fit of teary rage. It drained him to the bone. The darkness coursed through his veins, blinding and suffocating, and then spent itself like a flame without oxygen and left him cold and terrified. If this was the price for power, it was too high.

He ran away.

The Outer Rim was full of places where a good pilot could make a living, especially one willing to fly the routes through the Hutt space. It wasn’t a grand life but he also wasn’t starving. Most days.  

And then one day Ben sat at a cantina, pretending to care only for his drink and not listening to the talk of two men behind him. Some kind of military in ill-fitting civilian clothing; posture tight and skin pasty as if they haven’t spent much time under the natural sun. Sienar-Jaemus were looking for test pilots for their new line of fighters, and these two badly disguised officers wanted to recruit the best pilots the black market had to offer.

Ben aced every test. Sienar-Jaemus soon created a customised onboard system based on the feedback that Ben - now Kylo - would give them, improving the fighter’s performance tenfold. He was offered a contract and made a swift rise through the ranks. After a few years, Commander Kylo Ren was unanimously recognised as the best pilot in the First Order.    __

 

*

 

“Just because you have the best flight scores doesn’t give you the freedom for such disregard of direct orders!”

Captain Peavey was from the old school. An battle-worn Imperial, the kind Leia Organa helped to drive out from the New Republic space. What would she think now if she saw him yelling at her lost son, his spit nearly hitting Kylo in the face.

No point in such thoughts. Kylo gripped his helmet tighter where it rested against his hip and kept sliding down on the smooth black fabric of his flight suit. He shifted his left foot forward and cocked his hip a little to better accommodate the helmet, and Peavey went even redder at the blatant disrespect for attention. Kylo was sure that if Sienar wasn’t giving the fleet a good discount on every commission in exchange for his extended services as a test pilot, Peavey would flush him out of the airlock in an instant.

“My apologies, sir. I thought S&D mission meant that I was to seek out the target and destroy it upon sighting.”

“You had the whole squadron of fighters! When you found the flagship, you should have contacted the rest, regroup and use your combine forces to destroy the target!”

The viewports ringed with the force of Peavey’s rage. A couple of mouse droids skittered out of the debriefing room. Another one rolled in, probably hard-programmed to finish whatever repair job it had here. It kept to the walls and only moved forwards in tentative bursts of activity. Even the droids weren’t suicidal.

“The coordinates the spies gave us were too vague,” Kylo shrugged. “When I jumped out of hyperspace, they already spotted me. I couldn’t risk them getting away while I would be waiting for the rest to catch up with me.”

“You broke formation just to show off,” Peavey hissed. “You exposed the attack with your foolhardy action and then you let them get away! All that arsenal on your fighter should have been enough to down a thirty year old cruiser.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Kylo bowed his head, feigning a regret he didn’t feel. “There’s been a malfunction on my weapon systems. I could only fire a single shot.”

“Is that so,” Peavey said, suddenly quiet. Something flickered around the edges of the hard line that formed his mouth, something dangerously close to a smile. “Let’s check with the mechanics, then.” He turned to the terminal, activating the comm channel.

“Bay Two,” he barked out, eyes never leaving Kylo who stood there, expression carefully blank. Just this time, he feared he might actually get thrown out of the airlock. Officers usually swallowed a story as he fed it to them, respecting the virtual untouchability of an ace pilot and sometimes aided with a little mind trick to ease the morsel down. But Peavey was made of stronger stuff, having once served under Vader himself.

“Get me a read-out on Commander Ren’s TIE weapon systems,” Peavey ordered. There was a hurried, off-mic  _ yessir _ , then a long pause and finally the comm cracked back to life with an unexpectedly clear voice.

“Captain, sir, the read-out is currently unavailable. The whole system is jammed, I am looking into it now… ah, yes. There is a burnt-out coil in the launcher system. Manufacturing error, I’m afraid. Might need to check the entire supply...”

“You do that,” Peavey barked, furious that his little suspicion was proven wrong. “And make sure that Ren's fighter is in working order for the next mission!”

“Yes sir, right away, sir,” the voice over the comm snapped back and Kylo woke from his surprise enough to notice something familiar about it. The way it clipped the words precisely like bullets, the haughty accent that sounded so out of place coming from a lowly mechanic... It was the prissy ginger that always, always yelled at Kylo for coming back with some new damage from every mission, it had to be. Kylo was pretty sure the man hated him. He never expressed concern over Kylo's wellbeing, he only cared about his precious machines. So why would he corroborate Kylo's story?

And more importantly, how would he know Kylo's story in the first place? Kylo didn't count on getting chewed by the Captain himself, he made up the weapon malfunction story on a whim.

It was a mystery but right now Kylo had to concentrate on looking innocent and chastised enough to not blow his luck with Captain Peavey.

“The Silencer is still a prototype,” he said apologetically.

Peavey only huffed. “You got off the court martial this time, Commander, but you're still suspended from missions until you learn to obey strategic orders.”

“Yes, sir.” They both knew it was an empty threat. Sienar had set down strict conditions to their contract which ensured that Kylo would be deployed in every battle. They needed as much live action data from the TIE’s flight computers as they could get.

“And next time, when you have a single shot, aim for the bridge,” Peavey added bitingly before dismissing him. “According to our intel, there was General Organa on that ship.”

As if Kylo didn't know it. He turned sharply on his heel and strode off.

When he ran away from Luke's school, his mother still held a position in the Senate. He wasn't following politics during his time in the Outer Rim, and after his recruitment it's taken him an embarrassingly long time to realise that the First Order wasn't just another junta concentrated around some former Moff, but something much more organised, vast and ambitious.

The First Order had resources, patience, and most importantly, a vision. Kylo could identify with it, and actually did most of the time. The New Republic was weak and already corrupt, too inefficient to solve the problems of the poor worlds in the Outer Rim, and paralysed with their disarmament act. He hated the stale air of Republic space and their hysterical fear of Vader bloodline. First Order wasn't obsessed with the past, and for that alone Kylo liked it.

Even though there were questions nobody seemed qualified enough to talk about, like where did the soldiers come from. But he had made his bed so now there was nothing left but to sleep in it, right?

But even with the resentment he felt towards the New Republic and everything it represented, he was dismayed to learn that it was his mother who commanded the Resistance and stood at the other side of the barricade.

Leia was wrong, her fight was futile and only wasting lives of those loyal to her trying to slow down the inevitable victory of the First Order, but Kylo couldn't bring himself to kill her.

Since then, Kylo played a dangerous game. His strategy was to take out the teeth from Resistance attacks, to prevent them from harming the First Order but sparing lives whenever he could. Just like now: the single torpedo he fired into the flagship fuel tanks destroyed most of the fighters parked in the hangar before their pilots could reach them, and robbed the Resistance fleet of enough precious fuel to put a damper on their attacks for a foreseeable future. But the explosion wouldn't have damaged the hyperspace engines and indeed it didn't, the  _ Raddus  _ had jumped out of danger before the rest of Kylo's squadron got near enough to get a shot.

It was a game that got more dangerous every time he got away with it, and Kylo didn't know how long his luck would hold. But speaking of luck… 

 

*

 

“Hey Thans, have you seen that ginger mechanic around here today?”

Petty officer Thanisson looked up from his terminal in the Bay Two control room and grinned at the two cigarras that materialised in front of his face. But before he could grab them, Kylo snatched them away, holding them out of reach with a grin of his own.

“You mean Hux?” Thanisson leaned back in his chair, rotating lazily to the left, then to the right. Kylo maintained a mutually beneficial relations with most of the crew in charge of the hangar bays that kept logs on the TIEs departures and arrivals. A properly motivated petty officer could cover an unsanctioned flight every now and then.

“I don’t know his name,” Kylo admitted. “He never introduces himself when he hisses at me that I scratched the paint on my TIE.”

“As if it ever was just the paint with you,” Thanisson chuckled. “But to answer your question, the only red-haired mechanic we have around here is Brendol Hux’s bastard.”

Kylo frowned at the odd descriptive, watching in confusion as Thanisson’s eyebrows wiggled in a suggestive expression. For a minute, there was only the distant screeching of TIE squadron on their patrol flight and the innocuous pitter-patter of the omnipresent mouse droids sneaking around the hangar bay filling Thanisson’s amused silence before Kylo’s lips parted on a surprised exhale.

“Oh.  _ That  _ Brendol Hux?”

“ _ Oh _ , indeed,” Thanisson laughed. “Sometimes I wonder in what backwater hole they found you. Yes, our unlamented former Supreme Leader.”

Kylo thought fast on what he was told, both officially and through gossip, about the struggle for power that accompanied the early days of the First Order. How the organisation was founded by delusional Gallius Rax who died before he could see it formed, how the next leader Sloane was murdered in her sleep, and how the brief mad grab for power by Brendol Hux was cut short by Ormes Apolin, a former Imperial senator of Kuat and a man slippery enough to stick to the top for much longer time than his predecessors.

“How is he still alive?” Kylo wondered aloud.

“He was just a boy when it happened,” Thanisson helped himself to a cigar when Kylo let his hand fall, deep in his thoughts. “Plus, even his father didn’t think much of him. Wouldn’t make it very far through the ranks. But he’s surprisingly our best mechanic so he gets to live, I guess. What’s your business with him?”

“As you said, I heard he’s the best, and I need someone to look at the circuitry in the torpedo launch system,” Kylo said, keeping his tone bored and dismissive.

“Then you definitely want Hux,” Thanisson accepted the other cigar and slipped it into his breast pocket, next to his code cylinders. “Good luck putting up with his attitude and that huge stick in his ass.”

“He’s like that, isn’t he,” Kylo kept the conversation going in a hope to learn more. “Wonder if anyone’s ever got close enough to remove that stick, hm?”

Thanisson clicked his tongue. “Man, if you’re into skinny assholes, I’m always game, you know.” Kylo laughed it off. The Petty officer wasn’t his type and he knew it.

“But I’d be careful if I were you,” Thanisson told him, that easy smile on his boyish face suddenly turning cruel. “That bastard’s got the exact opposite of fanclub, if you get me. And there’s something uncanny about him, too. Weasel boy seems to know everything about everyone.”

“I noticed that,” Kylo muttered, glancing out of the window of Thanisson’s control room onto the wide expanse of the hangar bay below, rows and rows of anchored TIEs. A flash of red hair shouldn’t be hard to spot amongst all that silver and black.

Yes, there he was. Bright hair slicked back, chin held high, the headset of his comm as usual perching on one ear. Most people wore theirs around their neck when no superior officer was looking but not Hux. Either such a sticker to regulation or he was actually non-stop listening to something… Kylo said his thanks to the Petty officer, nearly tripped over a mouse droid about to dock into its trap door close above the floor, and set out to get a few answers.


	2. Crash

Finding a single person in the spacious hangar bay without the advantage of the control room perspective turned out harder than Kylo thought. That, or Hux was purposefully making himself scarce.

In the end he literally stumbled upon him. More precisely, over a pair of shined boots pulled over the baggy overall trousers, sticking out from under one of the heavy duty carriers.

“Could you watch where you’re going?” The man slid forward, thin waist wrapped with the tool belt, vest with many pockets slipping off narrow shoulders and finally the flare of red hair, its brightness muted under a copious layer of pomade. He propped himself up on one elbow and turned his face up to meet Kylo’s gaze. His eyes had the indeterminate colour that reflected the light in whatever room he was in, the skin over his sharp cheekbones was nearly translucent and spoke of not enough sun and not enough rations, and his lips were pink, full and currently drawn into the most impressive scowl.

There was a fresh scar splitting the lower lip, a thin red line drawn over the otherwise perfect bow. An accident, or a fight? Kylo forced his gaze to tear away from it and meet those eyes instead. Damn, they were distracting too, with their frame of golden lashes and the annoyed spark that shouldn’t have looked so sexy and yet it did.

“I was looking for you,” Kylo broke the silence just on the verge of it becoming awkward.

“Didn’t Thanisson tell you to leave me alone?” Hux adjusted the earbud of the comm in his ear. Kylo thought he could hear a faint stream of garbled Binary coming out of it. Hux pulled out a datapad from one of his pockets, quickly swiped something away and then again fixed Kylo with that impatient look.

“He tells that to everyone, doesn’t he,” Kylo hazarded a guess. He also put on a smile, that kind that usually worked on stubborn supply officers when he needed his less-than-regulation shipments to not appear in the logs. That easy, roguish kind of smile that belonged with the whole package of an ace pilot with no care in the world and that was currently wilting under the impenetrable frost of Hux’s gaze.

“Or I can read minds,” Hux retorted, lips quirking up in a smirk that was all threat. Kylo felt his blood run a bit colder. Did he know…? Or was he Force sensitive himself? He tried to subtly expand his consciousness, gently reach out and brush against the other’s presence… There was nothing. Either his abilities were going rusty with disuse, or Hux was just trying to scare him off.

“He did tell me you know a lot,” Kylo continued, undeterred. “I was hoping you’d tell me about the malfunction on my weapon system, for instance.”

Hux rolled his eyes and plopped back down, gripping the edge of the vehicle ready to slide back under it. “I already fixed that. Now go and bother someone else, hotshot.”

Kylo quickly looked around. There was nobody in hearing range. He dropped into a crouch.

“How do you fix a thing that’s not broken?” he asked quietly and laid his hand over Hux’s, his own gloved fingers covering the man’s bare ones, thin and stained with grease. It was an unconscious gesture, meant only to halt Hux’s escape, but Hux snatched his hand away with a yelp as if he’d burned him. Only now Kylo noticed that the knuckles were bruised and littered with tiny cuts, and two of those bony fingers were swollen and wrapped in a duct tape, the edge of an ugly bruise just peeking out from the makeshift bandage.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hux hissed, cradling his injured hand against his chest. Even lying down on the floor, his glare could kill.

“You should go to the medical with that,” Kylo blurted out, momentarily forgetting the malfunction mystery. Those fingers were clearly broken…

“That’s none of your business.”

Kylo pulled back. _Our unlamented former Supreme Leader’s bastard,_ Thanisson’s words echoed in his mind. What if even the medical staff enjoyed picking on a lonely boy with nobody to stand up for him?

“There's a couple of bacta patches in the kit inside my fighter,” Kylo kept his tone low and gentle, as if he was talking to a frightened animal. “I could look the other way while you take some,” he offered.

Hux's eyes narrowed. “In exchange for what?” The question was full of scornful disdain. “Do you think I’d bend over for you more easily if you showed me some kindness?”

Ben gritted his teeth.

“Look, never mind what I told Thanisson, never mind I'd really like two know how you know about it, just. Tell me why you helped me.”

“I did no such thing.”

Kylo huffed in the frustration. Then it occurred to him that Hux might be scared that Kylo would blow his cover… if he was a secret Resistance sympathiser…

Or Kylo was being paranoid and seeing too much into things. After all, he was Kylo Ren, the unparalleled ace, the heartthrob of the troops. Maybe Hux's acerbic attitude was just him playing hard to get and he really cared if Kylo got airlocked or not. Kylo really shouldn't find that idea as pleasant as he did.

“Did you have a… personal interest in my mission, perhaps?” he tried, innocently enough.

Slowly, Hux pulled his body up until his face came inches close to Kylo's, eyes boring into his. They were steel grey with blue flashing from the depths, Kylo noticed.

“Careful, Ren, that _your_ personal interests don't interfere with orders from High Command next time,” Hux said slowly, lips curled back to reveal teeth in a smile that sent chills down Ren's spine. And a traitorous flutter down his groin. Fuck. It would seem he really was into skinny assholes.

 

*

 

The next day there were two bacta patches missing from Kylo’s kit, and Hux’s behaviour made it clear that he considered matters between them even and over.

Which didn’t appease Kylo in the slightest. Hux obviously knew a lot about what was going on around the ship. It was one of his tactics to keep himself from becoming everyone’s punchbag. With that kind of knowledge as leverage, Hux could easily become Kylo’s downfall. From what he gathered from the gossip about the man, Hux would jump at any opportunity to get from that rocky bottom he was currently scraping.

The question remained, why hadn’t he done so already.

 _{ >time = >gain} _, BB-9E offered a theory when Kylo pondered about it aloud during their routine recon flight.

“Maybe you’re right,” Kylo conceded. Maybe Hux was simply collecting favours for some later time. Well, Kylo wouldn't mind getting some time alone with Hux again. The mechanic was cute - in that brittle, sharp-clawed way of a vulptex. Elegant features, bright clever eyes, fast reflexes… and mouth full of pointy teeth and that pretty, pretty coat cutting your skin when you got too close.

An alarmed beep from BB-9E interrupted Kylo's daydream and directed his attention to the tactical screen. Another fighter had just jumped into the system, and its designation wasn't First Order. Kylo knew even before his astromech finished the identification: it was the Resistance.

They shouldn't be here. Technically speaking, he shouldn't be here either. But he needed to think and an unplanned detour from the projected recon course was working better for him than hours wasted trying to concentrate in the neverending buzz of the Star Destroyer. The intel placed nearly nonexistent odds on this system being of interest to the Resistance so Kylo felt safe to unwind here.

Well, enjoying a little game of cat and mouse before driving away a lone X-wing was a way to unwind, too. He'd teach that pilot to not stick to their nose out of the Republic space and he'll even make it back to the Finalizer with time to spare. The Silencer was vastly superior to anything the Resistance had to offer, and Kylo was the grandson of the best pilot in the Galaxy, after all.

 

*

 

“--------eeeeeeeeeep!”

BB-9E came back online with a start, immediately confused why his gyroscope was off. Then he realised that it was him - he was still stuck in his pod, currently dangling from the crashed TIE. If he'd fully extended his long range antenna, he'd just brush the moss-covered ground under him.

Very carefully, he unblocked the locks keeping him in place during space flight and fell down, his dome coming up just in time to prevent any scratch to his camera eye and other sensors. One of the long panels of the TIE wings was still attached to the fighter, half-buried in the soft ground and leaving the wreck stuck at an angle, mostly upside down but leaning to one side. Broken pieces of the other panels were scattered around, one of them, almost whole but twisted beyond recognition, was wedged between BB-9E and the cockpit, blocking any view the droid could have had inside.

BB-9E took two seconds to count to 1000 and back to calm himself. Kylo was surely all right. The probability level was defined too vaguely but BB-9E didn’t feel like running the exact odds. Humans had security measures in place to prevent harm to their soft, breakable bodies. If Kylo hadn’t been ejected during the fall, the seatbelts would have kept him hanging in safety, provided the roof of the cockpit didn’t collapse...  

BB-9E’s frantic roll around the crash site to try and reach the cockpit from the other side was halted by a bang - and another - and then the sound of metal creaking - and BB-9E’s processor momentarily leapt into overdrive because Kylo was getting out of the cockpit...

The little droid rolled another couple of metres forward and froze. It wasn’t Kylo crawling out of the wrecked cockpit. It was the other pilot - the enemy pilot - trying to get a look in.

BB-9E was still too far to tase him. He was left to watch helplessly how the man pushed in one of the cracked transparisteel panels, peered in, and then immediately grabbed his hand blaster and pointed it at the crumpled form hanging limply from the pilot seat-

-and lowered it again, his whole posture sagging.

“Shit, I can’t do it. I can’t,” the man muttered, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. Then he slid his blaster back into its holder and went onto chipping off more of the panels, widening the crack so he could stick his head and both arms inside.

BB-9E leveled his voltage back down from the alarm mode. A quick analysis of historic data confirmed that the Resistance didn’t have a reputation for killing their prisoners. He decided to stay hidden behind a rock and watched the enemy pilot wrestle unconscious Kylo out of the TIE, prop him against the nearest boulder and check on his vitals. And all the while, talking.

“Man, you’re stupid. I can’t believe I’m doing this, and you’re freaking heavy. You’re heavy and stupid! Did you hit your head? I don’t see any crack on this thi- _whoa_.”

The man had taken off Kylo’s black helmet and was currently blinking in surprise at the sight of his enemy’s face. It was very pale but BB-9E noted with satisfaction that there didn’t seem to be any blood.

In fact, the one bleeding was the Resistance pilot. There was a smear of blood from a little cut on his face, probably where the visor shield of his helmet cracked and caught his skin. And yet he didn’t care for himself, opting to make sure Kylo was stable first. It was likely a really decent man, BB-9E concluded.   

Unfortunately for him, not everyone in the Resistance was as kind-hearted as this pilot. BB-9E had barely a second of to recognise the whirring sound behind him as something familiar approaching before he was violently zapped. The last thing he saw before his emergency shut-down was the rounded dome and unusual orange-white paint job of another BB unit.

  


*

 

There were many moments in his life when Poe Dameron thought he was going to die. But none of them was quite as intense as the one a mere second before the crash, when he realized that the First Order pilot wouldn’t swerve his fighter away either.

It was a desperate tactic to get one up in this clash where Poe finally found his match as a pilot. To charge head first against the other on a collision course, hold it until the last moment - the enemy was supposed to lose their nerve, give in to their instincts, pull up or to the side and offer Poe a clear line of shot…

This one didn’t. Maybe they both thought the other would chicken out… until it was too late, and Poe thought he saw a flash of Shara Bey in his peripheral vision, and _this was how he was going to die_ -

-when suddenly the other pilot threw up their arm, palm out, perhaps to shield their face - right after Poe’s X-wing jumped unexpectedly to the side. Or was it before that? Poe wasn’t sure, he only remembered his surprise at feeling the feedback twitch of the controls he was holding on so tightly that he could feel his bones grinding against each other. Something - the TIE’s extended solar panels, probably - must have brushed against the foils of the X-wing and changed their trajectory in the last fraction of second.

They still both lost control of their vessels and crashed but against the ground of a barren, uninhabited planet instead of ramming it into each other, which brought about considerably less damage. Poe even dared to believe that his X-wing would be good to fly if he sealed the cracks in the bottom of the fuselage and resigned himself to a slower flight with the S-foils stuck in the attack position. By some miracle, his ship had survived the crash as if he’d landed on freshly fallen snow, not earthy ground littered with jagged rocks.

The Silencer, on the other hand, crumpled like a tin foil dummy. Poe could hardly believe his eyes as he looked over the wreck, sharing his thoughts with BB-8 out of habit.

He had seen the ship many times in action - admired its sleek lines and breathtaking speed, while also swearing blue murder on the bastard who flew it. This lack of robust inner structure could have meant two things - either it was still a prototype, foregoing durability in favour of maneuverability, or its pilot was a suicidal idiot.

“A bit of both,” a voice groaned behind him, interrupting Poe’s loud musings. Poe whipped around, putting a hand on BB-8’s dome to stop him from charging out. The astromech had already flipped out his taser, ready to act if the pilot tried anything. But the young man - much younger than Poe, and wasn’t that a surprise - didn’t seem to be in any shape for anything unexpectable. He just sat there, slumped and shivering, bluish lips in an ashen face and eyes only slowly gaining awareness and focus. He must have hit his head really badly but Poe couldn’t find any bump earlier…

Then he seemed to remember what happened and his hand automatically slid to his personal weapon holster - empty. Poe felt a little better about his initial attempt to just shoot the enemy pilot who so often ruined their operations but only barely. Blinking and shaking his head as if to clear his vision, the man finally looked up into Poe’s face - and the barrel of his own blaster pointed at him.

“Where’s Niney?” he asked. When his only answer was Poe’s frowning confusion, the man attempted to stand, only to stumble back down when his unsteady legs gave out under him.

“BB-9E, my droid. Is he okay? Where is he?” he repeated, his voice rising with unmistakable agitation, and against his better judgment… Poe smiled.

  


*

 

The air was getting colder, the daylight taking on an orange tint and the shadows of the rocks around them growing longer by the minute. And yet Kylo remembered the blinding overhead sun spearing through the cockpit as his TIE tumbled to the ground. Either this planet had a really fast rotation or he was out of it longer than he thought.

His whole body felt as if someone put him through the grinder and then added a liberal amount of glass shards before moulding him back together. He barely crawled over to Niney, helped him back online and then just flopped down, curling on the soft soil between the rocks and reflecting on his own stupidity.

He shouldn’t have tried to pull off that maneuver. He shouldn’t have panicked and thrown out the Force against the X-Wing in the last moment, and he definitely shouldn’t have used the Force to cushion its fall, completely forgetting about himself until it was too late.

The effort drained him of all strength. Now he was at the mercy of a Resistance pilot and probably going to be taken prisoner by the time morning came, provided he didn’t freeze to death during the night.

“Hey,” footsteps came closer to loom over him and in the next moment, he was being wrapped in an emergency thermal blanket. The Resistance pilot sat down next to him and gave him a resigned smile.

“I should probably tell you I activated my beacon so my folks will be coming for us soon. In the morning, I guess. I got a bit farther with the scouting than I thought.”

Kylo’s lips twitched in a small smile in return, he couldn’t help it.

“Then I should tell you that the First Order recovery team will be coming, too.” He glanced at his loyal astromech. “Niney has a homing beacon integrated. Never trusts me to not land us in shit.”

“Looks like he’s been right,” Poe laughed and BB-9E chirped a cheeky confirmation. Then Poe’s tone turned serious.

“Any idea when? I don’t want my squadron getting into a fight they couldn’t win.”

Kylo shrugged. “Probably later on. The First Order wasn’t anywhere near this sector.”

“Except for you.”

Silence settled over them together with the swiftly falling darkness, interrupted only by the sound of BB-8 working on patching the X-wing’s outer casing. BB-9E kept rolling idly around, giving the other a wide berth but also looking for all intents and purposes like someone itching to give a piece of advice.

“I’m Poe. Poe Dameron.”

Kylo stared at the outstretched hand, then glanced at Poe, then back. Cautiously, he shook it.

“Ren.”

“Is that a first name or last name?”

Kylo huffed. The unbeatable optimism in Poe’s voice was hard to resist.

“Kylo,” he conceded.

“So, Kylo,” Poe grinned even wider, “who talks first? I talk first? You talk first?”

“Why are you so keen on _talking_?” Kylo groaned.

“Because I am stuck here with you for the night and it’s too bloody cold to sleep!” Poe threw up his arms in exasperated gesture before quickly wrapping them back around himself, rubbing at his arms.

Kylo stared at him for a moment and then shifted his eyes aside, lifted one end of the thermal blanket and waited in silence.

Poe didn’t need to be offered twice. Soon, the warmth beneath their shared blanket spread, easing away the lingering ache of Force-overuse and melting the initial awkwardness of their proximity. Kylo could feel his eyelids grow heavy.

“You know,” Poe said eventually, “you don’t strike me like the warmongering, brainwashed, indoctrinated machine I always thought you were.”

“I’m usually a disappointment,” Kylo hummed sleepily. Poe would take that as a joking retort, never knowing that it was the bitter truth.

“You could come with me. My people would treat you fairly.”

Kylo felt a little pang of sadness over the overall warmth and comfort of another human being snuggled close to him.

“It’s too late,” he sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should probably know that the idea for this fic came to me when my 9-yo daughter played with our LEGO models of TIE Silencer and TFA X-wings, and, after the dogfight, she took out both the figures of Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron, laid them side by side, put a handkerchief over them and told me "Hush, they're sleeping."
> 
> It was just too good to not use it.
> 
>  
> 
> The art for this chapter was drawn by the amazing [creepycreepyspacewizard](https://creepycreepyspacewizard.tumblr.com/), thanks again so much:)


	3. Escape

Kylo woke to the roar of starfighter engines taking off. He scrambled to sit up but all he could do was to watch the X-wing getting away, low and unsteady, but at least flying. It seemed to Kylo as if the fighter waved its wings for a second before it disappeared behind a mountain ridge, and on impulse, he waved back.

Poe had respected his decision to stay with the First Order and took himself, his droid and his ship to another spot where he could await the help of his comrades.

BB-9E stood a beneath the wreck of the Silencer, weak morning light reflecting on his slowly blinking camera eye, and looked a little forlorn.  

The encounter stirred something within Kylo, deep buried memories that brought long forgotten emotions back to the surface. He sniffed. Then he realised the tip of his nose was freezing, but the rest of him was still warm. The thermal blanket was still wrapped around his legs.

He'd have to bury it, of course. If Captain Peavey found out that instead of killing the best pilot of the Resistance, Kylo indulged in a bit of peaceful comradery, no contract would save him from a swift execution. He'd also have to make up a story about encountering a whole squadron of enemy fighters to explain the current state of the Silencer. There was enough scorch marks on the fuselage to corroborate that. Kylo chuckled when he remembered the feeling of surprise, challenge, and the rush of adrenaline when he realised the enemy was going to test and push the very limits of his abilities.

Now he only needed Niney to hack the nav computer and create a convincing software bug that would explain why he strayed so far from his projected course.

 

*

 

Kylo spent the entire humiliating flight home in thoughts about that elusive and prickly ginger mechanic, unconsciously mirroring the dejected mood of his droid.

“What's up, buddy?” he asked when the silence became too much to bear. His droid was never one for idle chatter but under normal circumstances, he'd also waste no time to tell Kylo in exactly calculated Binary how stupid he'd been.

Now, BB-9E only lifted his dome a little and beeped a short line: _{BB-8!colour:FO=0}_

“What, you're missing that orange little murder child? After the first thing he did was zapping you?”

Niney tipped his dome down and back up in a short nod. _{00000100000}_ , he beeped wistfully.

“Yes, he was rather unique…” Kylo agreed. He couldn't really blame his droid to take a shine to that vibrant, orange and mean thing when the exact same happened to him.

Besides, although it happened once in million years, BB-9E was wrong. There was the same colour as that BB unit's original paint job to be found in the First Order. And Kylo was determined not to let it slip through his fingers.

The first thing he did after debriefing was to take a lift down to Bay Two. It would take Sienar at least two days to ship in another test craft but it wasn't the machines he was after.

“If it isn't our esteemed ace,” Hux greeted him, not even pausing his brisk pace across the hangar while he wiped off his hands with a dirty rag. “Heard you had to be towed home. Did you have a personal grudge against that planet that you decided to ram it into its surface head on?”

Kylo easily matched his stride, to the mechanic's obvious displeasure. He was apparently used to the advantage of his long legs. Too bad Kylo was taller - but then, Kylo towered over almost everyone on the Finalizer.

“Do you have grudges against planets?” he inquired, turning Hux's insult into conversation starter.

Hux's lips did something complicated between scowl and smile. “Several. If I could redesign the original Death Star, I'd make it so it could vaporise at least five planets at once.”

Kylo laughed. “The original Death Star was powered by Kyber, and the Empire mined almost the whole Galaxy dry for it. You would have to get a much stronger power source, and apart from a star core I can't think of any.”

Hux was looking at him thoughtfully, as if Kylo didn't make just a stupid joke right then.

“Too bad nobody would ever take seriously my plans to harness a sun, then,” he said eventually, shrugging.

“Too bad for the First Order,” Kylo agreed in mock earnestness. _Good for the Galaxy,_ he added to himself.

He subtly looked Hux over, pleased to see that his hand seemed to be healing, and that there weren't any signs of recent beating. At least, not visible ones.

“Are you checking me out?”

Oh. He wasn't being as subtle as he thought. Perhaps directness would be better.

“Would it be a problem if I was?” he asked, catching Hux's gaze and holding it.

Instead of getting flustered (good!) or angry (bad, very bad), Hux snorted.

“Hardly. Since Thanisson spread the gossip that you were about to add me to your list of conquests, ogling is the least everyone is going to expect from you.”

Several things in that revelation have thrown Kylo out of sorts - he'd have to address them in order. The most pressing was…

“And you don't mind? The gossip?”

Hux finally slowed down, if only to walk through the automatic door into a small workshop. Helplessly, Kylo followed.

“It has its perks,” Hux continued to one of the workbenches, putting away the tools from his belt.

“Nobody dares to mess with me now when they risk unspeakable repercussions for touching the great Kylo Ren's property,” he said and Kylo thought he could hear a pinch of resignation among all that taunting scorn.

“Ah.” Kylo was at a loss what to say. Hux had the innate talent to turn him this way.

“You're not my property,” he said at last, somewhat lamely and completely unnecessarily.

“Oh thank you for pointing that out, I am sure I wouldn't have noticed!” Hux turned on him and - did a double take.

“Do you… _like_ it when I am yelling at you?!”

Kylo quickly dropped his infatuated little smile. “I like your accent,” he admitted. “It gets stronger when you're pissed off, so…”

“You haven't seen me pissed off _yet_ ,” Hux warned him and went back to organising his tools.

“Anyways, there's no list,” Kylo finally got to correcting another of Thanisson’s tattle tales. It was true that he deliberately flirted left, right and centre, to complete his image of the suave ace pilot and the troopers’ poster boy, but he’d never taken it any further. Most of the First Order personnel was frighteningly well conditioned, too dangerous for his game.

The way Hux's hands paused just a little at the statement before resuming their work, slower this time, gave him hope and boostered his next words.

“But if you'd be amenable… I'd really like to take you for a drink sometime. Soon.”

Hux turned to face him again, leaning against the bench edge and for a long moment looking as if he wanted to say something. In the end, he just shook his head with a little amused smile. It lit up his face in an unexpected way and as much as Kylo admired his sharp and unattainable side, he found he wanted to see more of this soft and human one.

“You're something else, aren't you,” Hux remarked with a little wry laugh.

“I should hope so,” Kylo puffed up a little.

“I shouldn't,” Hux's face grew serious and closed off again, the cynical mask falling back into place. “Most people wouldn't bother with asking me on a date. They just tell me to turn around and bend over.”

The matter-of-fact tone of Hux's words left anger rolling inside Kylo's guts, anger at everyone who ever hurt this man just because they could, just because his station was beneath theirs. But it wouldn't do letting that anger rise. Hux barely knew him, he wouldn't trust a show of protectiveness. ‘I am not most people’ would sound like a meaningless platitude, one Hux probably heard too many times. That haughty, passively aggressive expression also clearly said that Hux didn't want pity.

“I believe,” Kylo said instead, “if I ever tried something as stupid, I'd end up with a stab wound in the stomach.”

The corners of Hux's eyes crinkled even as his mouth remained schooled into impassivity, and he nodded.

“That's a justified belief. I can put aside three hours after the end of beta shift, the day after tomorrow.”

And with that, he grabbed another set of tools and walked out, leaving Kylo reeling a little and grinning.

He had a date.

 

*

 

The next morning Kylo woke with a start, the faint echo of cries and the image of flames still lingering at the edges of his senses. One look at the chrono told him it wasn't technically a morning yet; it was late into the night shift and aside from skeleton crew on the gamma shift the huge ship was mostly quiet, no signs of alarm.

The Finalizer was hovering on the orbit somewhere, Kylo could tell by the lack of what he could only describe as ‘hyperspace feeling’ and that only starfighter pilots would understand. So that fire, that carnage he saw in his sleep… must have been a ground operation. Kylo flopped back into bed and pulled a pillow over his head. He'd been using the Force a lot lately, more in the past few days than he had in years, and it must have made him more perceptive. To terror, despair, suffering...

That's what the First Order had dealt upon whatever world lay beneath them now. Blood and destruction. Kylo could no longer look the other way and pretend it was for the greater cause.

But what there was for him to do? Where he should turn to? If he ran - like he did from everything in his life - he knew there was nowhere the First Order wouldn't find him. Their spies and sympathizers have spread across all the Galaxy, infiltrated into every society. They had greater resources at their disposal than the New Republic, than even Leia Organa could imagine. If he ran, the First Order would hunt him down, ferocious and without mercy.

He'd burned all bridges to his past… His mother would condemn him, his father would run away from him, and his uncle - his former master - would probably be the first to raise a lightsaber against him.

 

*

 

“Ren,” a fellow pilot, whom Kylo remembered only under her callsign Quickdraw, nodded at him as Kylo put down his loaded tray in the officers mess hall. She didn’t waste more of her breath than for the one syllable of his name, concentrated as she was on thorough chewing. The morning rations were mostly protein, which was a little more palatable than evening rations that Kylo suspected were mostly fibre.

“Morning,” Kylo greeted back. “What's the name of that sandball down there?” he tipped his chin towards the viewport and the sight of a cloudless, desert planet behind it.

“Jakku,” Quickdraw uttered with her mouth half-full, rolling her eyes. Kylo groaned in sympathy to that contempt. Jakku was the absolute middle of the biggest nowhere… heavens knew what there could be of interest to the First Order.

He lounged away most of the alpha shift, taking himself away and out of everyone’s way into the officers gym in a last shot at easing the boredom of a grounded pilot. It was the right place for picking up gossip. He soon learned that the ground operation was overseen by Captain Phasma, and that most of her landing force was a fresh batch of rookies, straight out of the Stormtrooper training program. From the training sims directly to burning people alive. What a rite of passage. Kylo winced and added two more weights to his bar to sweat out the growing sense of unease that plagued him since last night.

It didn’t work. Kylo kept losing count of his sit-ups, and nearly lost a round of sparring match against Quickdraw because he couldn’t concentrate on blocking her punches. He ran on the treadmill and he felt as if he was running away from something, with no avail. Something was creeping upon him. Something, somewhere, was going to go very, very wrong.

The culmination came abruptly and in the form of two Stormtrooper sergeants entering the gym in off-duty training gear and lively chatter.

“...said, not worth the fuel. All that fuss for a single prisoner!”

“Yeah, but this one counts. I heard the Captain calling him the best pilot of the Resistance...”

Kylo was down from the treadmill and out of the gym before the pair of them managed to salute him. There was only one man whom Kylo could imagine as the best pilot of the Resistance. It must have been the one who nearly outmatched him, not even two days ago.

Halfway to the prison deck he realised that he was still in his workout clothes, dripping with sweat. That wouldn’t do. But his quarters were on the officers deck, many levels up, and the dull pressure of discomfort that had weighed him down all day transformed into acute screaming in the back of his head that he couldn’t afford to lose a second, he had to act now, now, _now._

Then he remembered the storage rooms close to the hangars where extra flight jumpsuits were kept. He ducked in one and quickly rummaged for one roughly his size. Slipping it on, he listened for any signs of troopers patrolling this section but the corridor seemed quiet. There was no alert, the hangar bay close was on stand-by, pilots catching up on their sleep in their quarters. All clear.

Kylo barely made it two lengths of corridors away from the hangar when suddenly the lift door at the end of the corridor opened. Two people stepped out of it and Kylo froze.

One was a Stormtrooper, gleaming white armour and helmet that jerked in surprise when he spotted Kylo. His hand with an assault blaster shook a little, and he gripped it tighter and pointed it back at the other man, who was…

It was Poe, though Kylo almost wouldn't recognise him at first. Sand dust was covering his face in patches, mingled with streaks of dried blood from his temple and busted lip. His eyes were purple and swollen but the spark of recognition was unmistakable even in the low corridor lighting.

Swallowing dry and putting on an air of confidence he didn’t feel, Kylo walked closer to them until he could read the Stormtrooper’s designation. Poe was watching him closely, as if he wanted to say something. Kylo prayed he wouldn’t.

“FN-2187. Report,” Kylo barked out, mentally weighing his options. He didn’t have any weapon but he _could_ use a mind trick on the ‘trooper, the lot of them were half-puppets already… but that would reveal a thing about him to Poe that he didn’t want to share. He’d have to hope that the weight of his rank and reputation would be convincing enough…

“Commander, sir. My orders are to take this prisoner to a shuttle. He’s to be taken to the Supremacy for further interrogation,” FN-2187 rattled off with a shake in his voice, audible even over the distortion of his helmet.

There wasn’t any shuttle ready and waiting in the hangar bay from where Kylo just came. His confusion and suspicion must have showed on his face because in the next moment, the FN-2187’s blaster was pointed on him.

“Wait, wait!” Poe exclaimed, lifting his hands. Only now Kylo noticed that the cuffs on his wrists were not secured, he wore them only for show.

Poe Dameron was already being rescued. Kylo wanted to laugh with the overwhelming sense of relief.  

“We can trust him,” Poe turned to the Stormtrooper, who pulled off his mask, revealing a scared but determined face of a young man, hair shorn in perfect regulation cut and skin gotted with droplets of nervous sweat.

“Trust him?” he protested. “It’s Kylo fucking Ren–”

“Watch out,” Kylo hissed, pointing a thumb behind himself. From behind the corridor junction, all three of them could now hear the heavy steps of an approaching patrol.

They filed back into the lift just in time, Poe pulling Kylo in with them despite FN-2187’s glare. Kylo pushed the button for the hangar bay on another level.

“Is he with the Resistance too? _Really_?” FN-2187 pressed on immediately, waving his blaster at Kylo in a rather disconcerting manner in such an enclosed space.

Kylo ignored him and rounded on Poe. “What the kriff were you doing on Jakku?”

Poe slumped against the wall, rubbing at the bloodied side of his face with his sleeve. “A mission for Master Skywalker. There were worshippers of the Church of the Force living on Jakku and he believed their leader might have some important artifacts…”

“Wait! You’re telling him what even the interrogators couldn’t beat out of you? He’s an officer, a kriffing pet of the Admiralty–”

“A moment, okay?” Poe told the aggravated Stormtrooper. Then he pointed his finger at Kylo. “Listen, I know what you’ve been doing. My droid told me he’d sliced into your fighter’s flight computer while you were out of it, down back there. I’ve seen your logs and I know you’ve been deliberately sabotaging your missions.”

Kylo folded his arms against his chest. “And?”

Poe stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Just saying.” He nodded at FN-2187. “This one’s doing the right thing, too.”

FN-2187 finally relaxed a little. He looked briefly down and then back up into Kylo’s eyes, defiant.

“The Captain ordered us to kill the worshipers. Burn down the whole village. I - I couldn’t...”

“It’s all right,” Poe put a hand on his arm, the comforting pat turned a tad useless with the armour but FN-2187 still leaned into it. Kylo watched it with growing understanding but before he could say anything, the control panel pinged with the announcement of their destination.

“ _Really?_ ” FN-2187 hissed under his breath at Kylo when he turned a corner and saw the hangar bay - much more busy than the former one where FN-2187 was originally heading to. Squadrons of Stormtroopers marched in tight formations to and from their drills, mechanics worked on their assignments. It was not full of people but it was… dangerous.

“You’re an infantryman, not a pilot,” Kylo rolled his eyes. “An attempt to fly off from a hangar in stand-by regime would result in a complete lock-down before you’d even get it airborne.”

Now he finally knew what the niggling at the back of his mind was. It was the Force guiding him, making sure he appeared in the right place at the right time. He whispered a little _sorry_ to uncle Luke for all the times he’d doubted it.

“Oh shhh...” FN-2187 trailed off, understanding dawning in his eyes. Then he nodded and resolutely put on his helmet. “So, lead the way. You know the story.”

Kylo shook his head, taking a step back into the corridor. “Take the TIE/sf from the rack on the right. They’ve been refueled this morning.”

“Hey, I’m no pilot but even I now the TIE/sf is a two-seater...”

It physically hurt to force the words out but Kylo couldn’t help it. “I’m staying.”

FN-2187 looked between him and Poe, a silent question palpable even through the helmet. Poe sighed and lifted one mock-cuffed fist to give Kylo a friendly bump to his upper arm.  

“Man, I know you’re better than this,” he looked up and around, indicating in the whole hangar, the Finalizer, possibly the entirety of the First Order. “If you ever want a change of scenery… just drop by on these coordinates.” And he leaned in and quietly but quickly rattled off a set of coordinates Kylo committed to memory. He quickly squeezed Poe’s hand in a silent thanks, throat too tight for words.

“Guess we’re even,” Poe smirked when he pulled away, slipping the cuffs on properly and hunching his shoulders into appropriately beaten posture.

“You wish,” Kylo smirked back over the ache in his heart. “Good luck.”

He turned and stepped back into the lift. The last he saw before the door slid shut was the unlikely pair of his short-time friends walking into the hangar.


	4. Collateral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the updated tags.

Finding out where Hux's quarters were wasn't the hard part. The assignations were stored in the ship computer, the file not even encrypted.

Mechanics were stored - there wasn't any better word for it - on the decks in between the hangar bays, a constant noise and vibration coming from either above or below. Kylo looked around the small cot, practically a tube containing a narrow bed and an overhead one cubic foot of storage space. The bed looked as if not slept in for days - Hux must have been the type to pull several shifts in a row. A cloth was spread over the half of it, littered with the innards of a mouse droid. The poor thing’s outer casing lay on the small patch of floor between the bed and the door. There wasn't even a ‘fresher, Hux would have to use the communal ones by the hangar to wash off after the end of his shift.

Kylo counted down the seconds until finally he could turn round a corner, pretend he was just leisurely walking past the lavatories for no reason and accidentally bump straight into Hux.

“Were you waiting for me to come out?” Hux asked, face lighting up imperceptibly in that not-smile that Kylo translated as exasperated amusement.

“Guilty as charged,” he smiled, still a little out of breath.

“Well, Commander, you have three hours to impress me, and I think the officers lounge would be a perfect place to start.” Hux actually licked his lips at that, and Kylo felt a little bad for letting down his expectations to taste something he didn’t have access to on a regular basis.

“There'll be time for non-regulation liquor later. I want to show you something,” he said, putting his hand at the small of Hux's back and steering him gently but insistently back to the hangar he just came from.

Hux shook off the hand as if it offended him and gave Kylo an incredulous look. “There’s nothing in that hangar I haven’t seen inside out.”

“I just might prove you wrong on that,” Kylo carried on, unrelenting, taking Hux’s elbow instead. It ended up jammed between his ribs in the next second but when Kylo didn’t budge, Hux rolled his eyes, huffed and followed him.

“This better be good,” he muttered just loud enough for Kylo to hear it.

They came to a halt in front of a brand new TIE Silencer, gleaming and ready to fly. The flattened top of BB-9E’s dome peeked up from his slot as he chirped his greetings and went back to finishing the power up routine. Kylo caressed the smooth surface of one armoured foil and turned to Hux with a wink.

“Fancy a ride?”

The incredulity of Hux’s look intensified. “I’m starting to see why there’s no list,” he said, parrotting Kylo’s earlier admission. “If you try this on everyone, it’s a miracle you’ve built the reputation you seem to have.”

Kylo refused to drop his enthusiasm. Too much depended on it. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Don’t tell me you never wanted to try flying one. The sims have nothing on the real thing.”

“An unauthorised departure-”

“I am due a test routine today,” Kylo interrupted him. “This beauty needs to be run in.”

“You’d let me to have the controls?” Hux’s posture didn’t break from its rigidity, but his voice showed the barest hint of interest.

“You seem to like to be in control,” Kylo drawled. “I happen to like that.” That, at least, was something he didn’t have to lie about, and seeing the faint flush creeping up Hux’s face made it the more satisfying.

“Besides, first flight on a new craft is always a bit bumpy, if you're worried about anyone noticing your beginner's performance.” It was a deliberate bait and true to Kylo's guess, Hux rose to it immediately.

“I bet you whatever you want that my score will be indistinguishable from yours,” Hux clipped off, one foot already on the ladder. Then he stopped, eyes shooting between the cockpit and Kylo, taking in the whole six foot three of him. Kylo barely resisted the urge to square his shoulders and flex his muscles, glad for the way his flight jumpsuit accentuating all the right places. He went without the pauldrons and the chest plate, and when Hux’s eyes snatched on Kylo’s chest on their way up, lingering just for a second, he knew it was the right decision.

“We'll fit,” Kylo assured Hux’s unspoken concern and handed him an extra comm, letting his own hanging loose around his neck. “Hurry up.”

“So eager,” Hux smirked but climbed in, Kylo following suit and only allowing a few seconds of his precious time budget to admire the way Hux's work trousers hugged his arse as he ran up the ladder.

Hux slid into the seat and Kylo folded himself along the back of it, his long arms reaching around to guide Hux’s hands onto the controls and his chin coming to rest on the top edge of the seat. His nose came close to Hux’s hair and he couldn’t help but inhale the scent of it, free of pomade and still a little wet from Hux’s shower. It made the whole impression of Hux softer, just perfectly imperfect around the edges, and Ren blew a quick breath over the strands, ruffling them further.

“Are you sniffing me like a dog?” Hux leaned away from him to glare, even though the cutting edge of it was dulled by the flush again creeping into his face. Kylo used that moment to reach forward and enter his codes blindly, the starting sequence practically a muscle memory by now. The cockpit came to life in a series of blinking controls, multicoloured specks of light dancing across Hux’s face. The pre-set trajectory flashed on the holoscreen and faded while Kylo was still holding Hux’s gaze and counting every unexpected speck of brown amidst the changeling green.

“Niney?” he broke the silence before it could become too charged, lifting up the mouthpiece of his comm to speak to his droid, “unlock us.”

The fighter jumped a little, the steady hum of antigrav generator indicating that the only thing keeping them above floor was now the repulsor technology.

“Now,” Kylo said in a low voice, directing Hux’s attention to the controls again, “this thing really moves, so keep your hands light. Slow and steady, just like that.”

They made it out of the hangar without a glitch. Maybe someone noticed the lack of Kylo's usual flair in the Silencer’s flight style but otherwise Hux managed to fly them exactly by the book. Once out, Kylo tapped the nav screen. The standard sublight training routine shimmered in blue projection and Kylo nodded towards it with a sly smile:

“Think you can do it within 110 percent of my best time?”

Most of the sim trained pilots with no real flight hours didn't come even close to 120. Best pilots in Kylo's specialised squadron routinely came within 104 and 105. Hux scoffed and flexed his hands on the controls, shrugging to throw off Kylo breathing into the back of his neck and fixing his eyes on the projection with absolute concentration.

Last two turns and spins in the routine and Hux’s split time was showing solid 111. Hux was gritting his teeth and Kylo felt the move crystallising in Hux’s head before he could make to execute it - a sharper cut off at the end of the tailspin, boosting the thrust on the way up - and he buried his face in the soft inviting space between Hux’s shoulder and jaw and  _ nipped _ .

To Hux’s credit, he the curse he yelled was perfectly articulate. Kylo was looking forward to a cute yelp - well, Hux had a way to foil his plans. Most people would also send the TIE into uncontrolled spin. Hux just careened through the remainder of the course in a straight line, forgetting all about the maneuvers but still in control of the ship.

“I could have made it, you li–”

“Not at that speed,” Kylo interrupted his angry sputtering. “This is not a simulator, the G-force here is real. There’s a reason I have to spend two hours in the gym each day, Hux. This-” he pointed to his own trapezius muscles, “-isn’t just for show. I’ve seen bulkier men than you losing consciousness when a move like that cut off the blood flow to their head, and you’re a–”

“No need to finish that, point taken,” Hux huffed, squirming in the seat in obvious embarrassment. “Not my fault that the only workout I get is tightening the bolts.”

“To be fair, you did almost make it,” Kylo pulled up the flight score. “You really never flew a TIE before?”

“Just the sims,” Hux looked straight ahead, even though the flush was back, telling Kylo that the praise wasn’t entirely unwelcome. “Hours and hours. You’re right that my physique never pitched me for the starfighter corps, so I never applied - and then it was a moot point anyway.”

Kylo didn’t miss the small ripple of regret that flitted around Hux’s eyes, just a momentary softening of that haughty expression that the man wore like a second face. He barely began to see through the cracks and already he knew he was going to miss the glimpses of the man underneath.

“I like engineering better,” Hux continued. “Designing - technology, weapons, training sims...” He sounded wistful. “But now I’m stuck with maintenance and repair sixteen hours a day.”

“You’re bloody good at what you do,” Kylo tried to console him. Hux looked at him askance, unimpressed with the attempt.

“Whatever keeps me alive,” he said, mouth downturned with sarcasm.

_ He's our best mechanic so he gets to live,  _ Kylo remembered Thanisson’s words.

“But it's not your only survival strategy, is it?” Kylo stretched a little and put his head to Hux's other ear, lowering his voice.

“The man who knows everything about everyone.”

“Are you hiding something, Commander, that you're so afraid of my clairvoyance?”

“No, and no. Not afraid, impressed. Took me a while to figure it out. Nobody ever pays attention to mouse droids.”

The shift from contempt to surprise on Hux's face was delicious to watch.

“I wasn't born and raised on a star ship, so I am not blind to them like the others,” Kylo explained with only half the truth. He wasn't about to tell Hux that the final clue was the gutted out mouse droid on Hux's bed. That would show his hand too soon.

The uncovered secret as if unlocked another layer of protection around Hux. There was a sort of openness around him now, a fraction more of trust.

“You know about my father, right?”

Kylo nodded, unsure where this was going. The stars rotated around them slowly, Hux adjusting their course with small absent-minded tweaks as he steered them back to the Finalizer. Kylo glanced at the chrono. There was still time.

“Mad visionary, they called him,” Hux said bitterly. “He created the Stormtrooper program. Officer training courses. Look at it today. It’s a mess. Conscriptors numbers dropped by half. We’ve got outsiders, barely screened-” at that, he glanced at Kylo with narrowed eyes, “-in expert positions that we should have been able to cover by ourselves. Old Imperials still hogging the upper command structure… There’s no real change, no progress. I could’ve perfected it...”

Kylo didn’t know what to say. The First Order treated Hux like shit, and he still cared about its success. Either it was a part of his cover or he was that well indoctrinated. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea… but there was no backing out now.

“Speaking about perfecting… it’s time for another go,” he pointed out the Finalizer looming behind the viewport, large with closeness. A small nudge to Hux’s hand on the control got them in a starting position.

“There’s no sense in repeating what I physically cannot beat,” Hux frowned.

“That was just a ballet exercise,” Kylo waved it off. “Try the same routine, but this time under duress.”

“This thing can’t simulate incoming enemy fighters, can it?” Hux eyed the computer distrustfully.

“There are very many kinds of distractions,” Kylo grinned and stepped around the seat, sliding to the floor and emerging with his head between Hux’s knees.

The flush on Hux’s face couldn't be mistaken for a reflection from the status control lights. “You can’t be serious. This is dangerous–”

“If you think your piloting skills are not up to the challenge...” Kylo blinked up on him, running his palms up Hux’s thighs, caressing the inner sides of them with his thumbs. For a second he thought he’d end up with a heel between his ribs but Hux’s legs only trembled, just like his lower lip, before he caught it between his teeth and let his knees fall wider.

“I can’t believe it,” Hux laughed, just a little breathy and strained. “The famous Kylo Ren on his knees, eager for my cock.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be.” Kylo hooked his fingers under the waistband of Hux’s work trousers, feeling the twitch of Hux’s stomach muscles as he sucked in a sharp breath. The hooks came next, Kylo popping each one open single handedly, running his left palm up Hux’s thigh and side and back down, working out the tension there with firm, comforting caresses.   

The inside of the work trousers was soft, designed for comfort for long hours in various temperatures. Despite that, Kylo was still surprised to find Hux wore nothing underneath when he reached inside and brushed his fingers against warm and smooth skin. Hux's cock twitched in his hand, quickly filling in.

“Looks like someone had high hopes for this date, too,” he teased, pulling Hux’s erection free and rubbing it against his lips, inhaling deeply.

“Conceited fuck-ah!” Hux yelped when Kylo ran the flat of his tongue up the whole length of his cock, withdrawing just before he would reach the tip. He paused to lick his palm and wrapped his fingers around the shaft. It was thick enough to fit nicely into his hand and Kylo indulged in another nuzzle of that soft, warm skin against his lips. He was never much of a fan of the regulation soap but combined with a hint of sweat and the once-familiar taste of skin, it was nice. It's been a while since he went down on anyone but he was confident he still got the hang of it.

“What are you waiting for?”

“For you to start the routine,” Kylo said wickedly and popped the head of Hux's cock into his mouth, letting it rest on the flat of his tongue and doing nothing else.

“Kriffing hells, if you think I am touching you in return after this stunt-” Hux ranted but finally gripped the controls and sped the TIE forward.

Whatever happened next, Kylo knew he would never forget this. Even in his cramped position, contorted as he was beneath the computer screens and the seat, he could feel the acceleration and every change of direction of the fighter, every missed reaction and every loss of momentum on the routine he knew by heart.

Hux did his best to stay focused on flying while Kylo did his damnedest to throw him off, sucking in hard, long pulls only to switch to playful licking around the head of Hux's cock in the next moment. The combined result was that Hux couldn't quite get over the edge as he never could just close his eyes and let the pleasure wash over him. At the same time, Kylo wished he could feel Hux's hands in his hair, forcing him to take Hux deeper, faster - but those delicate, freckled hands were stubbornly holding onto the controls, their grip shaking and white.

Hux's face was a sight to behold. Flushed red, the freckles on his face standing out in sharp contrast, hair falling into his eyes, tips wet with sweat. His perfect lips were bitten raw with his effort to hold back the sounds Kylo was determined to wrench out of him. He made the mistake to look at Kylo once or twice, eyes bright and feverish and squeezed shut in the next moment to keep his focus.

“Fuck, I can't- I need-” Hux gasped and then growled in frustration when he righted the Silencer after the last loop. The clock had stopped at nearly 121 percent of Kylo's best time and Kylo pulled off his hard and straining cock entirely, holding Hux's hips pinned to the seat to keep him from bucking into Kylo's mouth.

“We need to test the hyperdrive engine too,” he said, voice raspy and a little slurred. Hux stared at him and Kylo imagined the sight he must have made, eyes wet, lips red and swollen, chin glistening with saliva and precome.

“What? I need to come and you need to stop fucking teasing-”

“Just activate the computer,” Kylo insisted, holding Hux down and out of reach of what he wanted most. “The coordinates are a part of the routine, the astromech will handle the calculations. Just hit it and keep your eyes on the stars. You’ll love it.”

“Fuck you,” Hux gritted out but obeyed, hitting the correct switches blindly and finally buried his fingers in Kylo's hair, pulling him back onto his cock. Kylo waited until he could feel the pull of hyperspace inside his head and then he slid down Hux's cock until he could feel it nudging the back of his throat. He breathed sharply through his nose, relaxed his throat and swallowed in the exact moment the stars around them exploded into white lines.

When the last drop of come slid down Kylo's throat and the incoherent string of curses from above petered out into the occasional panting breath, Kylo finally allowed the remorse to set in. He wrapped both arms around Hux's waist and buried his face in the grease-smelling fabric of his shirt, feeling worse and worse with each passing second and dreading the moment he'd have to speak.

The harsh grip on his hair relaxed into gentle tug, and then gentle, traitorously affectionate caresses. Kylo nearly sobbed. He didn't deserve this.

“I wonder if you'd want to sit in my lap next time,” Hux chuckled, finally catching his breath. Kylo gripped him tighter, foolishly trying to postpone the inevitable.

“Kylo? What's wrong?”

It was the genuine concern, the cautious use of his first name, that lifted Kylo's head and made him lock his tear-filled eyes with Hux's.

“I am sorry.”

The hand in his hair stilled. Something closed off behind Hux's eyes, as if their very colour turned from warm green back into steely grey.

“Got your fantasy fill and I can get lost out of your sight as soon as we're back?”

Kylo shook his head. “We're not going back.”

Hux’s incredulous laugh cut off in the middle when he looked back up at the hyperspace caleidoscope around them and realised they were flying much farther than a normal training course would allow.

“What-” he began, flipping off the switches. Nothing happened.

“Niney has the control now,” Kylo said.

Hux shoved him away and hastily fixed his clothing, as if even the memory of Kylo's touch was disgusting him.

“Did you blow me just to take away my attention from the navigation screen?” Hux laughed deprecatingly before Kylo could muster up a lie. “That's a new low. Fuck you, Ren. What are you, Resistance spy?”

“And you're not?” Kylo finally got out that last flutter of hope that maybe, for once he didn't fuck up entirely…

“No!” Hux yelled till a few specks of his spit landed on Kylo's face.

“Then why did you help me? Why did you tell Peavey that my weapon systems were jammed when they weren't?”

“I just wanted to stick it up to that smug old bastard! Peavey is a lazy, entitled shit that holds more grudges than competence- oh shit, do they think  _ I _ am a Resistance agent because of it? Was it all a trap? Did you just decide to have a little fun with me before you’d jettison me-”

“Stop, Hux! Stop.” Those frenzied accusations stopped making sense and Hux looked as if he’d pass out soon, out of breath and heart hammering so hard Kylo could hear it.

“We’re defecting. That’s all.”

“No.”

Something glinted in the corner of Kylo’s eye and he reflexively snapped his hand up, catching Hux’s left fist - and the thin, retractable blade poking from his sleeve - an inch away from his neck. Hux struggled and kicked, bruises blooming on his skin where he raged against Kylo’s hold, but Kylo didn’t budge.

“Think, Hux. There’s nothing for you there - just bullying and bare survival and no use for your talents. Can’t you see how-”

“Shut up, traitor!” Hux growled, like a rabid animal. “I would’ve made it back. I would’ve reclaimed what’s rightfully mine.”

Kylo suddenly saw his error in all its fatal glory. Brendol Hux, long dead, had created a program to turn abducted little children into perfect soldiers, and this living, desperate young man was his first product.

“I am sorry,” he said again.

He almost overlooked the warning light on the hyperspace control panel. Even then, the abrupt entering of the normal space jostled him - as it always did - and his grip on Hux’s hands faltered.

Hux didn’t need a second chance.

The pain slashed across Kylo’s face like a bright hot whip, from forehead to jaw, immediately flooding his right eye with blood. He felt the catch of the blade on the wire of the comm hanging around his neck, the dagger missing the hollow of his neck and ending up carving a path in his shoulder.

For a fraction of second, Hux froze, aghast, staring at what he’d done - but any remorse soon evaporated, drowned in the feral anger, and maybe Kylo only imagined it over the curtain of blood anyway… Half-blind, fueled by pain and at the end of his tether, Kylo lifted his hand against Hux’s face and used the Force to pluck at an invisible string of consciousness inside Hux’s head. Hux crumpled like a rag doll in the middle of his next strike and fell out from the seat, straight into Kylo’s arms.

“Niney?” Kylo mumbled into the comm, hissing with pain when speaking aloud pulled at the wound in his face. It wasn’t deep but it bled profusely, and he tore up his own sleeve and pressed the bundle against it in a pathetic attempt to stop the flow.

BB-9E’s affirmation came through the comm. They were at the coordinates Poe gave them. There was nothing but empty space for parsecs around but Kylo wasn’t expecting any less. Poe was kind but he was no fool.

“Is your homing beacon disabled?”

In lieu of an answer, BB-9E projected a holo on the comm screen inside the cockpit. It showed Niney’s tracking chip and beacon on the floor of the hangar, getting neatly smashed by a passing heavy transport.

“Good job. Now power up your long range communication and call your orange friend.”

_ {?} _

“Don’t pretend you didn’t get his frequency when you had the chance.”

In a very put-upon Binary, BB-9E confirmed that indeed the droid wasn’t rolling too far from his master when it came to asking someone on a date. Kylo only hoped the droid would have better luck than he did. He switched his hold on Hux’s unconscious form, settling in the pilot seat and cradling Hux in his arms, and waited for the pick-up. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to deeply apologise to everyone who, at the end of the last chapter, thought they were going to get a cute date. 
> 
> Welcome to the world of Kylo Ren, a walking disaster.


	5. Renouncement

Leia kept her steps measured and sure until she heard the hiss of the door behind her sliding shut. Only then she faltered, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes.

She was tired beyond her years - not physically, but emotionally. It's been a very difficult conversation with the man she just left behind the door. A man she barely knew, no longer a boy, and yet somehow still and always, always her boy.

In the end, Ben had cried in her arms, just like all those years ago when he messed up and broke something. Never trying to blame others like the other kids his age, but always terrified of losing his parents’ love over it. It broke her heart a little, every time.

She didn't know if she would ever learn everything what happened between then and now. She didn't know if she would ever understand. But she never gave up hope that Ben would one day come back to her, and now he was here, and her heart knew nothing else than to love him. Somehow that foolish maternal heart never thought past the joy of reunion and certainly didn’t envision the hell of a practical mess it will cause - but after all was said and done, justice carried out and penance served, she would still love him.

Just like Han. It was quite the shock to find him on Takodana where the Resistance rescued the defected Stormtrooper from the vengeful hands of the First Order. Even bigger surprise was the Force-sensitive girl that they somehow picked up along the way. Two days ago, Leia had no one, and suddenly her son came back, and her husband too, with an extra adoptive daughter by the looks of it.

A droid swerved out of the room next door and informed her in a polite tinny voice:  “Ma’am, he's waking now.”

Leia took a deep breath, steeled herself and entered the room.

The young man lying on a narrow bed in that sparsely furnished room was indeed waking. The droids have changed his clothes - bloodstained and torn - for a set of old, but clean things. Nobody currently at the base was quite as tall as this newcomer and Leia didn’t tell anyone that the simple white trousers and brown tunic used to be Ben’s, that she’d kept everything from that lost life in which she had a family.

Even as an adolescent, Ben was broader in the shoulders. The collar of the tunic was too loose on this man, the belt would need an extra hole or two punched in to keep the trousers from riding too low. He was clearly malnourished, but strong and taut like a coil of wire - his fists were curled tight even in his half-waking state. There was something almost innocent about his face but that disappeared as soon as he opened his eyes, blinking out their haziness in less than a second and immediately trying to sit up, taking in the entirety of the room with a mix of distaste and apprehension.

There was a moment of curiosity when he spotted her quietly sitting at the table in the middle of the room, a hopeful surprise that she wasn't what he was expecting, most likely some guards. Then his eyes widened with recognition - and his face hardened, shoulders tensed and his already pale skin blanched, putting the shadows under his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks into stark contrast.

“I'm General Organa,” she said nonetheless, kindly but keeping her reservations. She could feel his fear, and his need for some structure. Warm welcome would confuse him, he wasn’t expecting it and he wouldn’t trust it.

“And you are Armitage Hux,” she carried on in Hux’s continued silence. He swallowed but stubbornly held his tongue.

“Eventually, I would like you to tell me a few things, but there’ll be no interrogation if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Not at all. It’s not as if I had any means to prevent you or your Jedi brother rummaging inside my head.”

Leia only shook her head, passing over the accusation with a little smile.

“You can also ask all you wish to know. There are many things that will be new for you now that you’re staying with us.”

Hux kept his gaze fixed ahead, like a soldier at a rapport.

“I am not a defector, General. I was overpowered, captured and taken here against my will.”

Leia took a moment to consider her next approach. “I met your father, once.”

That got her Hux’s attention.

“I was but a young girl, the Senator’s aide… and he was the Commandant of the Imperial Academy, on Arkanis.” She paused, weighing her next words. “I’ve seen the way he treated his Cadets - pitching them against each other, making them kill the weak. Does the First Order really mean so much to you that you would defend it even after it shunned you?”

“I do not expect you to know about loyalty.”

_ Maybe it was a mistake to bring him here _ …Leia thought, but aloud she said:

“What is done, cannot be undone. You have to understand I cannot just let you go.”

Hux’s upper lip curled at that. Yes, he had enough tactical insight that he understood.

“I will give you some time to get used to life here. I understand you’re a good mechanic and even better engineer–”

“I do not wish to join you!” Hux spat. Then he pulled himself to his full height, hands clasped behind his back. “I wish to be held as a prisoner of war.”

“We mean no ill to you, Armitage.” Maybe it was the clothes, maybe it was the look of a haunted animal she could sense behind that fanatical light in Hux's eyes that reminded her so much of young Ben that she couldn’t help but reach out to him. He took a step back.

“I am sure there are Resistance spies or agents that have fallen into our hands. Don’t you wish to see them returned? Exchange prisoner for prisoner.”

Leia saw there was nothing that she could have said that would change Hux’s mind. But communications using a third party took time, and perhaps time would work in her favour.

“Very well,” she agreed. “I won’t force freedom on you - that would go against the very letter of it. In the meantime, you will be treated as our guest.”

A beep from outside requested entry and a moment later the door opened to let in a droid carrying a small box.

“Ah, here it is.” Leia took it and puts it on a table between them. “Ben thought you’d perhaps like to have your personal things.”

She knew what was inside the box - everything from the storage space in Hux’s cabin, according to Ben. Mostly data chips, some very old. She had them screened, of course. Aside from some incomprehensible plans and half-finished projects there were only a few holos of young Armitage in an Ensign uniform, some of them with his father. He wasn’t smiling in either of them.

“Ben?”

“You know him as Kylo Ren,” Leia nodded. “Ben Solo, my son.”

Hux closed his eyes for a second, tightly, and Leia could see his jaw working. “I see,” he said at last. Those two words seemed to chill the air in the whole room.

“He’s in detention, of course,” Leia continued. “The jury is still out on what would be his punishment for the many disasters he’d caused us.”

Hux looked up at that, mouth half-open as if he wanted to ask something, but quickly swallowed the surprise down and turned to face the wall instead.

“He’s currently next door,” Leia added quietly. “You might want to know that his wound is not grave but since he insisted the doctor would see you first, there’s very little we can do now to prevent the scarring.”

“I have no concern for his state,” Hux said harshly. 

“Then it’s odd that he had so much of it for yours,” Leia remarked. “Neither of us wishes you any harm, Armitage,” she repeated but he didn’t look at her, and didn’t break his silence for anything she would say afterwards.

In the end, she left to make the necessary arrangements for contacting the First Order about the prisoner exchange offer. 

 

*

 

“I can’t just let you roll into the High Command meeting with that eyesore of an emblem on your casing,” Sabine Wren halted BB-9E an lifted a can of spray paint.

BB-9E considered his options. Sabine was greying but still tough, carrying her jetpack with ease. How do you roll away from someone who can fly?

“Don’t worry, little one. Who do you think gave Dameron’s droid that pretty orange coat?”

BB-9E never experienced such a quick change of mind.

_ {blue?} _ he chirped, hopefully.

Sabine winked. “I happen to think you’ll look absolutely smashing in blue.”

In the end, nobody in the Resistance High Command cared about his colour. They only wanted his unaltered logs, which he provided when Kylo told him to. He understood that they contained evidence for Kylo’s defence in this trial. BB-8’s human, Poe Dameron, gave a testimony in which he vouched for Kylo too.

After the trial, BB-9E knew Kylo would return back to his room. He rarely left it these days even though he technically could. Master Luke Skywalker was visiting him regularly, and his parents as well. BB-9E was concerned about his human. Kylo looked sad all the time and began to wear a cowl with the hood always pulled deep down, hiding his face.

BB-9E was just about to roll out of the meeting room when he neatly bumped into BB-8. The orange droid’s rounded dome bobbed down and back up as he looked BB-9E over and chirped approvingly.  

_ {initial analysis: wrong} _

It was an apology for the zapping from their first meeting and BB-9E took it in stride.

_ {reverse situation=>identical action} _

BB-8 gave out a series of short beeping sounds at that and it took BB-9E about ten milliseconds to identify it as laughter. He would have to ask Kylo to implement the protocol for that into his programming. 

 

*

 

The command centre had emptied of loiterers and usual staff, leaving only the High Command conferring around the central projection table.

“It’s almost as if he was a double all the time,”Admiral Statura scratched his chin.

“That is the story we’re going to feed to the Senate,” Leia nodded. “His account on the exact strength of the First Order’s military will be a powerful argument.”

“We also have the former Stormtrooper. He might give a first hand testimony about the First Order stealing children in the Outer Rim. The Senate would not be able to ignore that.”

Leia studied the star map currently showing the Outer Rim systems that were lukewarm to the Republic at best, and dangerously inclined to support the First Order.

“Yes. I believe that those two will be the sparks that will light the fire that will bring the First Order down.”

“What about the third one? The mechanic?”

“I don’t believe he would want to help our cause now… but give him time.”

 

*

 

Another day passed before they finally established a non-traceable frequency to contact the First Order Star Destroyer Finalizer. The command centre was once again packed to the brim but only Leia stood within the recording perimetre of the holocamera, facing the shaking but still intelligible holo of Captain Peavey. Calmly and succinctly, she made him the offer to exchange Hux for a Resistance agent recently caught on Cantonica.

The blue-white image of Captain Peavey frowned.

“Hux… Brendol’s bastard? I thought he was dead. Lieutenant Mitaka?”

“Expelled from the officers corps and assigned to maintenance and repair, sir,” came the apt report of a young voice, picked up by the holocall.

“I see… did he have access to anything of importance?”

“Negative, sir. His code cylinders were restricted for the hangars only.”

Leia watched Hux across the room, standing by the wall with cuffs on his hands. For a second his face flashed with such self-satisfied malice that she was sure he must have had access to far more information than just the maintenance logs.

But Peavey didn’t seem to think so.

“You have chosen the wrong leverage, General,” he smirked. “We are not held back by sentiment. The time of Brendol Hux had passed when he outlived his usefulness, and we have no intent to foster that miscast tinkerer of his son.”

Leia’s stomach was turning from talking to this man but she maintained her calm. “He’s still one of your own.”

Peavey broke into laughter. “We renounce him.”

The words cut clear even through the low quality of the holo. Leia saw Hux’s face blanching.

“Keep that bastard runt if you wish. He'd be disposed of sooner or later anyway, you're just saving us the trouble.”

If Leia could strangle people across lightyears, Peavey would have dropped dead before he finished his laughter. As it was, she had to wait for his face turn serious again, his eyes taking on a glint of cunning.

“But as to your initial offer, we would be amenable to exchange your agent for the traitor Kylo Ren. It might turn in your favour - remember that once traitor is likely to betray again.”

Leia’s eyes flicked to the chrono counting down the remaining seconds, and she smirked - sometimes vindication felt so damn good.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Captain. My son is loyal to me.”

She ended the transmission before she could truly appreciate the horror in Peavey’s eyes when the implication would hit home but she could imagine it.

“That was bold, General,” Statura said. His wary tone expressed what he didn’t say aloud: that Leia might have had shown their hand too soon.

“Let’s get them all worked up trying to do the damage control. Kylo Ren was an important asset to them. We’ve already retrieved the data from the TIE advanced fighter.”

She turned to Lieutenant Connix. “How far did they get?”

“Not even close,” Connix smirked proudly. “Still two retranslation hubs between us and the last spot they were able to track.”

Hux made a stumbling step forward. Leia turned to him and cursed herself - for a second she forgot he was there. His movements - his whole presence felt sluggish - as if he slept and was only now waking.

“I once designed a tracking system,” he said, words mechanical and voice hollow. “It was able to calculate the source of a long range communication directly.”

“That’s impossible,” Connix interjected. “The hyperspace modulation of the signal-”

“We’ll never know now, will we?” Hux laughed, borderline hysterically. “Because Peavey knocked it off the table when I propositioned it.”

Something inside Hux was breaking. Leia feared that it wouldn’t be just Hux’s faith but his sanity too. The entire room stared at him, exchanging covert looks amongst themselves, until Hux became aware of it and his entire posture deflated. He looked briefly down, his hands clenching uselessly where they hung, weighed down by the cuffs, and when he lifted his head, some of his previous composure was back. But only a fraction.

He turned to Leia, forgetting to hold his chin high, forgetting the perpetual scoff of his mouth. He suddenly looked fifteen years younger, frightened and scared to let it show.

“Thank you, General,” he murmured.

He thanked her for trying. Leia made an oath to herself that she had to do better than try. 

 

*

 

Hux was just coming back from his morning jog when a familiar looking curly head emerged on the path, still criss-crossed with long morning shadows of the antennas surrounding the base and the cranes parked on the airstrip.  

“Hey, morning, Hugs!”

Hux rolled his eyes. By all means, he should hate Dameron. As far as he understood the chain of events, Dameron was the one who swayed Kylo Ren towards defecting and turned Hux’s life upside down as a side effect.

But there was a little problem with hating Poe Dameron, that it seemed almost impossible to.

“Could you have a look at my fighter? There’s something wrong with the ion flow booster.”

Hux stopped, leaned forward, braced his hands against his knees, and tried to catch his breath.

“How do you know the ship wouldn’t tear to pieces when you fly it next after you’d let me near it?”

Poe made a face.

“Look, I heard you’re the best mechanic. I’m the best pilot. There’s a thing called professional pride and I know all about that.”

Hux considered it. The truth was he’d rather give up his arm than to see a ship he worked on tumble from the sky. Another fact was that he was bored out of his wits. Self-imposed imprisonment was not as heroic as he thought.

“Fine. I’ll need your droid, though. He could give me the operating parameters of your hyperdrive without me having to fly it to see for myself.”

“Uh oh. That would have to wait until Finn gets back from his mission. They took off with Rey to Cantonica and BB-8 decided to follow her everywhere like a puppy… ”

He trailed off when he noticed Hux’s expression - Hux was never good at hiding resentment. Finn, the ex-Stormtrooper, universally liked, already entrusted with missions. Everyone looked up to him because he was their hero, the one who renounced the First Order on his own will and chose their side. Hux was not a hero. Hux was just a collateral.

“....right, that’s a long story. We should be heading for breakfast or there’ll be nothing left.”

“You go, I’m fine,” Hux shook his head. He couldn’t face the communal mess just yet.

“You’re not on hunger strike, are you?” Poe gave him a scrutinizing look and then grinned. “Nah. You actually look healthier than when you came.”

“I told you I’m fine,” Hux huffed. “I’m not even hungry. I already ate the leftovers from yesterday’s supper.”

“Man, how do you do it? I usually lick my supper plate clean, much less I’d save something for breakfast. But that’s the wartime for you. We’ll get off rations when we win.”

“I have decades long experience with wartime food rationing system,” Hux said dryly. “I was actually surprised to find that the Resistance has so much food to spare.”

“One protein bar, a bowl of porridge and a handful of seaweed looks like abundance to you? No wonder you were thin like a deathstick when they brought you in,” Poe shook his head but Hux wasn’t listening anymore. All he could think about were the  _ two _ protein bars and sometimes an extra piece of fresh fruit on his plate they kept delivering to his room every evening. 

 

*

 

Kylo just put his saved protein bar onto Hux’s plate as the droid passed by his door when the door to Hux’s room opened - something he’d hoped for and been afraid of for the entire week - and Hux bolted out, grabbed the plate and threw it on Kylo’s head.

“I don’t want your food,” he snarled. “I don’t need your charity or your pity!”

Kylo startled so badly that the hood slipped from his head. Hux paused, eyes catching on the slowly healing wound. An abrupt jerk of a hand - as if he wanted to cover his mouth, and was it dismay or disgust? - but then he recovered. Kylo turned his head away to hide the scar from view and fumbled to pull the hood back up.

“There’s only one thing I’m going to ask of you: Leave. Me. Alone.”

“I can’t.”

Kylo kept looking down on his own twitching hands, trying to keep himself from reaching out.

“I made so many mistakes so far that I just can’t afford to make one more. And letting you go without asking for forgiveness… it’d be it.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I am.” Kylo wondered if Hux remembered the moment aboard the Silencer when he gave  his apology in advance - how his voice sounded, wrecked and despairing… he was not far from that now.

“And for what? Misjudging me? Did you really think I’d throw away everything I knew, everything I was, for a pair of pretty eyes?”

Hux in rage was no longer beautiful. Kylo now believed what Hux told him, back on the Finalizer:  _ you haven’t seen me pissed off yet. _ He missed the man who trusted him - and he had only himself to blame.

“For...” Kylo trailed off. His lips trembled. “For mistreating you.”

“Oh right. Though maybe  _ misleading _ me would be a better word. I was right that you were something else - you were  _ worse. _ ”

Hux spat on the floor between them.

“I was used to people using me for sex, and I was fine with that! But you - you used sex to get around me. Fucking me wasn’t even your fucking end goal. You disgust me. You can stick your apology, I don’t want it. Leave me alone.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fantastic art for this chapter (as well as BB-9E in love in previous ones) was drawn by orange-helius.


	6. MIA

Kylo stopped sneaking Hux extra food but his annoying attempts at getting back into Hux's good graces did not.

It began with local wildflowers appearing randomly in places he was sure to look at or stumble upon - on his windowsill the first thing in the morning or on his usual place in the lone corner of the mess hall that he finally started frequenting. Once he found one when he opened his toolbox just as he was about to start working on the X-wings, the little purple bud not even fully blossomed, hidden shyly between the keys and spanners. Hux threw it out, like the others. He was a busy man now, with no time for such nonsense like fetching vases, dammit. Dameron’s ground speed in atmospheric flight had increased by nearly 10% after his first show of trust towards Hux and now there was a line of pilots waiting for Hux to do his magic.

Later that day, he went to change from his work overalls and a dainty white blossom fell out of the keyhole of his locker.

“This is unbelievably creepy,” he stated, louder than was needed in the otherwise empty locker room, and he thought he didn't imagine the rustle of fabric and hushed padding of sock-clad feet, as well as the softest sigh as someone sneaked out of the room.

The flowers stopped appearing. The first flowerless day, Hux was relieved. The feeling though changed into vague disappointment overnight. There was such a variety to the flowers. The jungle around the base was rich and verdant, the air in the morning so fragrant that Hux sometimes had to just stop and breathe.

He never really paid attention to everything colorful that grew in tufts and patches around the base. But suddenly there were so many flowers. He didn't know the name of a single one, despite having personally thrown a lot of them into the trash, sometimes crushing the petals with his bare hands. Shouldn't he check if they weren't poisonous? Certainly they seemed to have an effect on Hux’s clarity of reason. They must have fogged his mind into a lull of dangerous almost-comfortableness with living here. Perhaps the Resistance had established the base here so long ago that they developed an immunity, and it was only Hux’s and Finn’s lungs that never knew anything else than recycled air that were still sensitive to it. Certainly Finn looked downright euphoric when he was at the base.

The nagging suspicion made him go and ask for a holonet access. He didn't expect to get one - he could work and move freely around the base but technically it was nothing else than glorified internment. He supposed he'd be let go wherever he pleased once the war was over, never mind which side would win.

To his surprise, they installed a terminal in his quarters that day.

“The holonet access is restricted for everyone on the base,” Lt. Connix said, handing him the activation codes.

“Understandable,” Hux nodded.

“Any outgoing data is screened and for downloads, you need to fill in a form and wait for the approval.”

That in itself was a standard protocol Hux knew all too well already - nobody on either side wanted a careless recruit or a social media addict accidentally giving away the position of the fleet - or the base.  Downloads tended to leave behind a digital track and both sides had holonet specialists in their ranks.

His first request was a botanical compendium. The book gave him the names of all the flowers, together with some mushy poetry about their meanings to which Hux paid no attention, but there was no record on either of them being poisonous. Disgruntled but strangely intrigued, Hux continued reading - it was, after all, the first text he’d read in decades that wasn’t an engine manual or a weekly schedule of tasks. And the 3D illustrations were beautiful.

The next evening, he found a data chip in front of his door. He reasoned with himself it was prudent to pull up the contents on his datapad - just check whose pocket it did fall out of - but the first look told him it was a book. A book on legends of Lothal, of all things. Talking wolves and disappearing temples and other glaring nonsense. Hux read until the sky was grey with dawn.

The next book was a biography of some forgotten general of the Old Republic, highly interesting read from the strategic and tactical point of view, even though Hux kept snorting throughout at the descriptions of the outdated tech. How did a society like this win over the Galaxy in the first place?

It occurred to him in the middle of reading that this, too, was a tactic. Of one Kylo Ren, to win  _ him _ over.

He left the third datachip untouched exactly where he found it, telling himself sternly that the itching curiosity of what it could have been was him letting himself too accustomed to indulgence, and that wouldn’t do. It took two more rejected books for Kylo Ren to take the hint.

Leisure reading was keeping him from what he was best at, anyway.

“How do they even hit something with that?” he complained one day to Rose Tico. The tiny woman who shared his cynical worldview became his quiet if-not-friend-then-companion amongst the bolts, wires and grease.  

“Master Skywalker once hit the Death Star core with just a single shot from that,” she remarked wickedly.

“I’m pretty sure you could nail it down to the Force and not to the sighting system,” Hux grumbled. “Two independently controlled sets of foils, three times up and down and you’re off by several degrees.”

“Good luck finding a correlator that would fit in there,” Rose shrugged.

“They’re not that expensive...” Hux protested before he remembered himself. “Oh, right. I forgot that the sole manufacturer has an exclusive deal with the First Order.”

“Sucks, right?” Rose smirked and went about her day.

Just after lunch, Rose stopped him with a bemused face and handed him a package. Inside was the correlator - only it wasn’t new. Oh, Hux knew exactly how many times he’d seen this thing.

“You can’t start disassembling the Silencer for- for trinkets! The TIE is vastly superior to anything this wretched fleet has to offer and I won’t allow you to… to cannibalise it!”

Kylo ran away before Hux was done yelling. When Hux calmed down he could see where the idea came from - Silencer was put on hold now, no Resistance pilot apart from Dameron confident enough to fly it and Dameron loved his customised X-wing way too much.

And Kylo Ren - the famous and feared ace who couldn’t go a day without flying - was grounded. If Finn was an admired hero and Hux was a tolerated collateral, Kylo Ren was a mystery box that no one seemed too keen on opening. He  _ did _ join the First Order on his own will - and everyone half expected him to betray them again. Hux knew the outcome of Ren’s trial. Ren was blamed squarely for all the damage and loss of property he’d caused to the Resistance but the information and cooperation he provided upon his return were enough for them to grant him a general pardon. But pardoned was not acquitted, much less innocent. Kylo Ren wore a wristband with a chip these days. One step behind the outlined perimetre and the whole base would be on their feet.

 

*

 

The chrono showed half-past two in the morning and the whole base was on their feet.

Hux poked his head out of his room to try and parse from the shouts and whispers what the hells was going on. Much of the news was distorted through time, distance and too many mouths passing them on but the basics were clear.

Vice-Admiral Amylin Holdo’s flagship got caught by the Finalizer in a blockade in the Atterra system where the Resistance was smuggling in supplies to the Rebels, and in a desperate attempt to save her crew, the Vice-Admiral evacuated her cruiser and rammed it straight into the Finalizer at lightspeed.

The Resistance survivors were now heading for D’Qar in lifeboats. There were no survivors reported on the side of the First Order.

Hux figured he’d be of no help in the controlled chaos and so he went back to bed. To his vexation, sleep eluded him for the rest of the night. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the so familiar corridors and hangars torn apart and open to the merciless vacuum of space, those beloved majestic engines dead, their burning shells uncontrollably falling through the atmosphere of Atterra Alpha, and lastly, Captain Peavey’s burly, smug face frosted over with ice, eye bulbs burst from their sockets.

He didn’t feel as much sorrow as he should.  

  
  


*

 

Hux figured that the occasion called for a celebration of sorts. Maybe a vigil. He wasn’t sure. Any reason to get a drink seemed good to him, especially now. He’d spent the day lending a hand in the assessment and necessary repairs of the lifeboats and he could feel his every muscle - and every nerve, too. Working all day next to so many people with a fresh grudge against First Order was exhausting.

He was almost put off the idea when he arrived to the improvised bar (it’s been improvised approximately three years ago and the authorities never got around to close it) and immediately spotted Kylo Ren sitting alone in a corner, like a brooding cloud of dark misery surrounded by a blatant circle of empty space, a row of shots lined up on the small table in front of him.

But Hux had damn well earned his drink and he wasn’t about to clear the field just because Kylo fucking Ren decided to crawl out of his den. He took a seat at the bar and turned his back to that hooded shadow whose eyes he can feel boring into the skin at the back of his neck.

Rey, that Jakku orphan girl and Master Skywalker’s new apprentice, came in and sat down by Kylo. Hux watched them in the reflective surface of the rows of bottles and canisters lining up the wall behind the bar. Rey, for some reason, was neither intimidated nor distrustful of Kylo Ren, whom she stubbornly called Ben - and she in turn was the only one (aside from his family) who could get away calling him that without earning themselves a glare in return.

Perhaps it was a Force thing, them being both sensitive to it. Birds of a feather and all that. Perhaps it shouldn’t be so unbelievable that Kylo Ren would make a friend here, and a quite pretty one at that. Hux put his glass back down without drinking it, his thirst suddenly gone.

The overall noise of the bar lulled momentarily and he caught a thread of their conversation.  

“What are these for?”

Kylo took one shot and downed it in one gulp. The hood from his face fell back but he didn’t fix it.

“That’s for Quickdraw.”

He swallowed the second just as quickly. “For Strikes.” The third one followed suit, so fast he couldn’t even have tasted it. “For Poldin.”

The rest of the line disappeared while Kylo recited the callsigns and names of his old Finalizer squadron. They were all dead now.

“Did you know them well?”

Ren didn’t appear to be drunk, his speech was clear, only perhaps a bit louder than necessary.

“The closest thing to friends I ever had. And each and every one of them wouldn't hesitate a second to shoot me down if they met me now.” He chuckled. “Horrible people.”

“But they were still people,” Rey said. Ren gave her a rueful smile. 

“How long do you think does it take for people to turn into monsters? Twenty years? Ten? Five?” He eyed the line of empty glasses, as if he could conjure one more and full. “I've been with the Order for barely four years, and already some consider me irredeemable.”

“You and I both know that for some people, it takes longer than a lifetime to become the monster the others see in them.”

She patted him on the shoulder and went to the bar to get a drink of her own. She liked those fruity ones, the more colours the better. Hux shrank on his stool and hoped she wouldn’t try to rope him into a conversation-

A group of young crewmen of Holdo’s ship burst into the bar. Three girls and a boy hardly over the legal age, still riding the high of near-death experience and the satisfaction of dealing the First Order such a heavy blow, which Hux considered unfair because all they did was cower on the lifeboats while Holdo sacrificed herself. They were loud and raucous and the boy was already drunk off his ass.

They piled around the table close to the bar and set about discussing the way how to best crown tonight’s accomplishments - by picking up someone, apparently.

Hux had plenty of practice giving off an attitude as if he was made entirely of cold shoulders. After one or two flirting shouts that slid from his back like water from oiled pan they turned their attention elsewhere.

“What about that one? Llyn, you’re into that type.”

The girl called Llyn took one look at Kylo and grimaced. Hux already knew what this was going to be about. The scar Hux gave him was not pretty. The flesh healed in an uneven, wrinkly line, thin and still red under his eye as if perpetually irritated and flaring into a broad stripe of gnarled tissue towards the edge of his jaw. It highlighted the already hard-to-miss asymmetry of his face and Hux wondered if it hurt when Kylo smiled. Not that he would have seen him smile, lately…

“Yeah I know, he’s built, but would you want that face get anywhere near you?” Llyn groaned.

Behind them, Rey slammed the half-empty cocktail glass on the bar counter.

“He got that scar saving a man’s life,” she growled. “So you better show some respect.”

She accompanied the threat by rising her outstretched hand and suddenly all the glasses on the group’s table lifted an inch into the air, floating there shakily and at the verge of spilling.

“Leave it, Rey.”

Kylo Ren got up, the alcohol he consumed showing in the weariness and overly cautious slowness of his movements, and walked out, keeping his eyes on the floor. Hux was glad for it, he didn’t know what would he do if Kylo looked at him.

The drunk group collectively decided a hushed retreat was in order and Rey sighed, returned to her cocktail and kept glaring into the wall. It took Hux an embarrassing minute to realise she was glaring at his reflection.

“Saving a man’s life,” he scoffed to himself.

Rey turned to him, as if she was waiting for this. Challenging him to pick a fight with her.

“Do you disagree?”

“A bit dramatic, don't you think?” he imitated that Force gesture, overdid it for the sake of mockery. “Aren't you Jedi supposed to be less… temperamental?”

“Well, I don't see you standing up for him!” Rey accused. Hux lifted an eyebrow. 

“I don't see why I should.”

She shot up like a spring and suddenly she was right in his face, jabbing her finger into his chest.

“You know what I don't see? I don't see your frozen corpse floating amidst the wreckage of the Finalizer. If you're now sitting here and enjoying your drink, you. Owe. That. To. Ben.

The finger poking into his chest hurt.

“You seem so confident in knowing what I wouldn't rather be doing,” he hissed. 

“Stars, Hux, you're such a prick. Look, Ben had been messing up his whole life but for some reason he thought that from all that damned ship, out of those thousands of First Order assholes, your ass was the one worth the chance at better life. Don't make me believe it was a mistake too.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared, the height difference between them irrelevant. 

“You all keep ranting about better life, my own sake, greater good…” Hux waved at the serving droid for another drink. “I am sick of it.”

“Because you know we're right!” Rey shouted. “Here you have people who actually respect you, who would never abandon you, who would always come back for you!”

She was breathing heavily and tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. So worked up over something,  _ someone _ who wasn’t even her family… Hux frowned - but she wasn’t done with him yet.

“Here you have someone who cares for you and continues to care for you despite you being an absolute asshole to him all the time! So pull your head out of your ass and learn to appreciate that!”

A couple of the lighter bottles on the shelf behind the bar clinked with the force of her outburst. Hux looked at her and didn’t even try to keep the suspicion off his voice.

“Why do you even care?”

She looked at him incredulously for a moment and then she shook her head - whatever she saw in him must have disappointed her.

“Because we Jedi care about people who are hurting. And Ben is. He gives and gives and asks nothing of you in return because he thinks it's his penance.” She paused, drank up the rest of her cocktail and grimaced at the stale taste. 

“What a waste of a good heart.”

She stomped off, leaving Hux with a bitter taste at the back of his throat and an uncomfortable weight in his stomach.

Heart? Surely all those gifts and tokens were nothing more than Kylo Ren trying to buy his forgiveness and appease his own conscience? Surely Kylo Ren didn't actually… love him? 

 

*

 

Kylo wandered aimlessly around, eyes half-closed most of the time and his face turned towards the sun. He'd missed natural sunlight during those years spent aboard Star Destroyers. The bright weather was at odds with his mood but he knew he needed fresh air every once in a while. Even taking a stroll alone was better than to sit in one place and feel himself slowly rot away.

The base is busier than usual, with the arrival of the new pilots and new resources. Something was in the works, Kylo could feel the air vibrate with excitement. News kept circulating the base, about the recent activity of the Republic fleet, about new systems declaring open war on the First Order. A change was brewing in the Galaxy.

He realised too late that his feet carried him to the starfighter hangars, as if looking at them for a while would soothe the ache of loss in his heart. He missed flying so much. Rows of rusted A-wings and battered X-wings, and somewhere behind them must have been-

Out of nowhere, BB-8 rolled out from the the line of machines and bumped straight into Kylo's shins, nearly toppling him over.

“Ow! Watch out, little one!”

BB-8 rolled an inch back and then nudged him again, as if he wanted to steer him out of the hangar. Bewildered by this strange behaviour, Kylo suddenly caught another Binary beeping close by, interspersed by a human voice. Both, he knew all too well.

He sidestepped BB-8 and hurried on, followed by angry beeping, before reason could catch up with him and tell him he shouldn’t. The sensible thing to do would be to turn around and leave Hux to whatever he was up to.

He passed one dilapidated U-wing and suddenly came face to barrel with the laser cannon of his TIE Silencer. BB-9E in his brilliant blue-silver paint coat rolled around frettily and Hux was just closing the engines panel. He pulled off his work gloves, nodded shortly to Kylo without meeting his eyes, turned smarly on his heel and strode off.

“What was he doing here?”

Kylo wondered if Hux didn’t warm up to the idea of cannibalising the Silencer for parts. But when he pried open the panel and peered inside, nothing seemed to be missing.

“What did he do to my ship?”

_ {answer:non-disclosable} _

“Niney, it's still my ship. Tell me or I’ll revert you back to the factory setting!”

_ {benefits>>>threats} _

“I don’t care what you think is good for me, I need to know!”

BB-9E gave out a long, warbling sound. Kylo looked at him incredulously.

“Did you just… stick out your tongue at me?”

_ {tongue:not found} _

“Oh you little shit…” Kylo gave in, watching Niney roll away, joined by BB-8. They kept bumping into each other teasingly and overall seemed provocatively self-satisfied. Kylo was left alone, just him and his TIE, both useless.

Footsteps accompanied by the unmistakable swish of robes announced Luke’s arrival and interrupted Kylo’s woolgathering.

“So, Ben, walking the narrow path of the just, how it’s going?”

Ben looked warily at him. Was Luke asking how he was doing? So little people bothered with asking these days. Everyone seemed to know his heart down to its most secret places. But Luke once told him he didn't go searching people's hearts. “I am not wise enough for that,” he said and didn't elaborate. The question here and now could be - was Kylo trustworthy enough?

“I’ll let the others to be the judges of that,” Kylo said at last.

“The others? They can judge your deeds, not your feelings.”

Kylo didn't expect anyone to ask about his feelings. He was humbled and grateful, that was what people would expect to hear if they asked.

“It’s good. I'm good.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “You don't look good.”

Kylo raised his hand and slid his fingers along the sleek, sharp edge of the foil. The TIE was brand new when he stole it, no battle scars to show for their adventure.

“Before, when I used to run away from the pain, I felt good,” Kylo started tentatively. “But I kept making wrong decisions and ended up hurting people around me. Now I've done the right thing and the only one hurt is me… So I guess it's the better option.”

“You’ve spoken like a true Jedi,” Luke chuckled. “Only with a much less outdated speech patterns.”

The laugh took Kylo by surprise and just as quickly it was gone, trailing off into a silent sigh.

“Anything else I can do for you, Uncle?”

“Yes. Your mother is expecting you in the command centre.”

“What?” Kylo flinched at the possibility of another questioning. “I already told-”

“You’re going on a mission.”

Kylo gaped. The abrupt swell of hope made him stop breathing for a few moments, and he tampered it down enough to check Luke’s eyes for any hint of jest, of mockery - but no, there was only fondness, and even a little pride.

He shot up and nearly broke into run before he remembered himself, swivelling mid-stride and narrowly avoiding knocking his head on the U-wing’s stabilization flaps.

“Thank you, Uncle!” he shouted and ran. 

  
  


*

 

Kylo’s mission was planned to take three days. Fourth had passed without him returning and not even the fifth brought any news of him, let alone he vagrant pilot himself.

People started watching the sky with anxious looks and talking about imminent evacuation. But nothing indicated at any increase of the activity of the First Order, and the base stayed vigilant but quiet.

“What’s up with you gingers?”

Rose walked out to them to the base perimeter where Hux sat on a patch of grass, absentmindedly twirling a purple blossom between his fingers. BB-8 was perched next to him, his long-range antenna methodically scanning the horizon. As if he could catch a signal the big arrays around the base have missed.

Hux nodded in acknowledgement and she sat down by him, hesitant and frowning.

“People keep saying…”

“That Ren saw his chance and took it?” Hux didn't beat around the bush, words cutting like glass. Rose nodded mutely.

“Well, he didn’t.”

Next to him, BB-8 chirped a vehement confirmation.

“Hux… I saw you working on his ship before he took off. Did you…” she visibly considered her next words and then probably decided to call spade a spade, “You haven't put a kill switch in there, have you?”

Hux stared at her as if she grew Togruta montrals and then he huffed out a single laugh.

“You thought he wasn't coming back because I finally got my revenge?”

“You hate him,” Rose pointed out.

Hux didn't contradict her. He looked back at the purple morning sky. Only birds and winged lizards.

“But that's between me and him, not between the Resistance and the First Order.”

“Fair enough. But what did you put in? A tracker?”

“A tracker could be traced back here,” Hux dismissed the idea. Rose looked at him expectantly. He knew her enough - she came for an answer and she wasn't leaving without one.

“I just did my best to ensure he'll make it back in one piece,” Hux capitulated, ashamed of the admission.

“Provided he's coming back,” Rose muttered sceptically.

“He is.”

Hux fixed his eyes back on the horizon, as if he could see the TIE before the orbital sensor system would catch it, and didn't say anything else.

Well, not aloud. Because inside of him, the words were boiling to the point of overflowing, running in mad circles and breaking themselves against the confines of his tightly clenched teeth.

_ He didn’t run away because I haven’t forgiven him yet. I need to forgive him and for that, he needs to come back. I need to tell him. If I don’t tell him, I might never forgive myself.  _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this is the last chapter count bump-up. There will yet be an epilogue and that'll be it.


	7. Start over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos for the entire opening sequence should go to @obsessions-and-dreams because she was the one who came up with the dramatic, romantic, and oh-so-Kylo-Ren scenario.

“Set the course for the base, Niney.”

A distressed beep over the comm told Kylo how possible was to execute the order and where exactly he could stick the likes of it.

“I know we’re coming in too steep! There’s not much I can do about it.” Kylo let go of the controls just for a moment to wipe his sweat-dripping hair away from his eyes, and the ship wobbled, filling the cockpit with the ominous creak of strained metal.

The Silencer was barely holding together even before they crossed the entry interface, the friction of the wispy atmosphere around them now tearing at the ship and filing away all loose bits. The maneuvering thrusters provided the last semblance of control Kylo had over the ship, and even they flickered off and back online the closer Kylo was to the surface. The better part of the control panels was dead.

“Landing thrusters?” he yelled over the noise.

_{response:0}_

“Docking antigrav?”

_{voltage:0. Odds of survival in case of terminal collision?}_

“Never tell me the odds!” As if he didn’t know that the likelihood of them getting smashed against the ground was alarmingly high.

“At least you got a back-up in the computers at the base,” he cracked a weak joke. An angry beeping featuring at least six different Binary equivalents of _fuckwit_ flooded the cockpit.

“I know, buddy, I know,” Kylo soothed him. “I’d miss you too.”

Depressurisation warning light flared to life at the periphery of his vision. He turned to check the readings on cockpit pressure just as the entire screen sparked and went black. Shit. He’d have to hope his helmet and life support would be enough before the air around them would be thick enough. Not that it’d take too long, unfortunately. 

They were coming in too fast.

  


*

  


Hux had spent enough restless, empty hours on the tarmac, watching the inbound fighters and freighters and looking for the one missing amongst them, to immediately notice that there was something wrong.

“He’s not slowing down!”

General Organa ran out of the command centre, comm in hand. A group of Resistance commanders stood in the clear space between the grassy mounds of the hangars, heads tilted back and eyes full of worry.

Luke Skywalker strode over to them and gently pried the comm from Organa’s white-knuckled grip.

“Feel for the Force, Ben,” he said into it. “You can stabilise the ship-”

“ _‘m sorry Uncle,_ ” came the crackly reply, almost drowned in rattling noise. _“Too weak - never worked on - just on others -”_

“He’s afraid,” Rey whispered, standing there rigid, brows furrowed in concentration. Using that mystical power of hers to communicate with Kylo, apparently. She jerked out of her stupor, looking around in confusion until her gaze fell on Poe and her quizzical face cleared with understanding.

“He’d done it once before and lost consciousness afterwards.”

“All the times I lectured him about discipline...” Luke growled under his beard and threw his arm up, closing his eyes, face thunderous in his focus. Rey joined him, throwing her powers alongside her Master’s. Leia stood next to them, eyes wide open. She didn’t seem to have heard anything going on around her. Her lips kept moving with voiceless words.

The black dot in the sky didn’t stop growing.

“Damnit, he’s falling too fast,” Luke swore, bracing his hands on his knees and breathing hard. Rey kept trying, baring her clenched teeth in the invisible effort, but it didn’t seem to have any effect.

 _So much for the Force_ , a part of Hux’s brain scoffed - one too hardwired in irony to be silenced by horror. _No match against gravity, heh?_ And then another part of his brain - one too awake at all times to be numbed by dread - picked up on the word, and it was as if a switch was flipped inside his head. He was no longer stunned. He was moving, commanding and terrifying.

“Clear the airstrip! All the way, clear it!” He yelled and waved his hands. There were people scattered along it, gawking at the sky. One of them had enough presence of mind to jump into a lone A-wing left on the ground and steer it away to the hangars.

Hux broke into run along the airstrip, pointing at heavy duty repulsors that stood there, ready to unload cargo from supply runs.

“Get it here, and turn it over! And that one over there, behind it, form a line! I need as many as you can get here, in a straight line on the airstrip.”

Surprisingly, from all the people who stared at him as if he’d grown a second head, Finn was to first to move and run to one of the repulsorlifts. Poe took only a moment to glance at Leia and when she nodded, he set out to fetch a lever needed to overturn those heavy machines. They could be manipulated with a push of a fingertip when engaged and floating, but upturned…

“Hux, but the repulsor field only works when it can push against a solid object!” Rose shouted.

“Yes, and there’s one falling from the sky right now!” Hux yelled back.

Then he turned to the Force users. “Tell him to try and lift the nose. Straighten him up if you can. He needs to fly in the shallowest curve possible,” he instructed and Luke nodded. Rey pushed with the Force again and the tiny distant Silencer visibly wobbled, it’s path curving up a little. It didn’t really slow down but even the smallest change in trajectory could buy them precious seconds.

Another two overturned repulsorlifts slotted into the line, heavy platforms now placed like immovable monoliths on the tarmac. Hux could already hear the high-pitched whizzing sound of metal cutting through the air, the rattle of loose parts that sounded as if they were going to fall off the ship.

He lifted his hand.

“Wait for my mark, and then activate them in a sequence, one after another.”

The Silencer was very close now. Hux could recognise the reflective panels on the Silencers cockpit, a red dot that grew bigger with every second.

And then they were hit with a blast of air, dust particles stinging in their eyes. Hux squinted but refused to close them. He thought he could see Kylo's outline in the cockpit, he could almost catch his gaze-

“Now!”

The first repulsorlift came to life with a low rumbling hum and the Silencer jolted in the air as if bounced off an invisible cushion, Kylo's face nearly flattening itself against the transparisteel. The platform short-circuited in a burst of sparks and smoke and the TIE, carried on by inertia, continued its fall only to come directly above another lift as it was engaged. The second lift slowed the TIE further, it’s trajectory evening out into an almost flat line, jumping like a pebble skipped over the surface of a lake. Third blast of repulsor force flipped the ship upside down and sent it tumbling over the last few meters before it came to a stop, hovering in the air few inches above the last lift.

And then the lift short-circuited as well, its upturned position fusing up the circuitry, and the Silencer plopped down on it in a undignified heap of rickety metal and scorched armour plates.

For a second, there was no other sound than the crackle of fried wires. Then the entire crowd erupted in clapping and cheering.

“Man, that was crazy!” It was Rose, _jumping_ on him in enthusiasm and hugging him, Hux too stunned to react. “You just totalled four heavy repulsorlifts but that was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen!”

Poe and Finn piled on him too in a hug of too many arms for Hux’s comfort before running to the wreck to help Kylo out.

“Thanks kid,” a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Hux turned around and faced General Han Solo, beaming with that gruffy half-smile of his. He blinked and swallowed, unsure what to say.

People were… cheering on _him?_ Congratulating him? _Thanking him_? He was just doing his duty...

He couldn’t remember if someone has ever called him _kid,_ with such simple gratitude and pride. His father. His superiors. Anyone.

Luke sat down on one of the dead repulsorlifts and looked as if he could use a stiff drink. Rey sat slumped next to him, clearly exhausted, but lifted her head for long enough to briefly catch Hux’s eyes and smile, eyes soft and even humbled a little in apology.

“That was some quick thinking, Armitage,” Leia said next to him. She alone looked as composed as ever but something seemed to shine from inside her. “I would welcome your insight the next time we’re planning a mission.”

Now Hux definitely knew he must have been dreaming. He was going to wake up anytime now, Kylo’s Silencer crashed in a smoking crater in the middle of the airstrip and…

Except that the ship was here, looking as if it took a shortcut through Mustafar lava fields but miraculously holding together, upside down but whole.

“Does he not know which side of this thing the landing gear is?” Poe was laughing as he freed the furiously beeping Niney out of his upside-down predicament.

“I know little one, it wasn’t funny the first time either!”

Finn crouched down to fumble with the hatch. There came two distinct bangs from inside.  Then it opened and Kylo Ren fell out, straight into Finn’s arms.

“Niney?” Kylo looked around, wobbly on his feet, disoriented and looking ready to vomit. BB-9E cheerfully beeped, already on his way to droid repair ward. BB-8 was rolling in excited circles around him, mercilessly showing away anyone who wasn’t quick enough to jump out of their way.

“That’s Ren for _thank you_ , you’ll get used to it,” Poe clapped a little nonplussed Finn on the shoulder as they together steadied Kylo enough for him to look able to walk.

“Stars, Kylo, you look like shit.”

Kylo indeed did. Now that he had an unobstructed look of him, Hux noticed the bruises on the side of his brow and face, the hair tangled with dirt and matted with sweat, the scar beading with fresh blood where the too fresh skin tore again, and those eyes, bright and swimming as if Kylo’s body was running on adrenaline and not much else.

Kylo’s eyes scanned the crowd until they landed on Hux and his dirty face broke out in the widest, possibly a little deranged grin. He straightened - or attempted to - shook off Finn’s hands and set out to Hux, stomping with clear effort and purpose and only stumbling twice. Hux watched him with growing apprehension, still too overwhelmed by the adrenaline and relief to move but a single muscle in his body, until Kylo came to a halt in front of him.

“You know, don’t you,” he said.

“Wha-” _what should I know_ , Hux didn’t get to finish because the question was cut off by warm, chapped lips against his, prickly with salt crust and melting with desperation.

Kylo Ren broke off the kiss before Hux could even begin to process it, grinned again, bloody _winked_ at Hux and then promptly passed out. 

 

 

*

 

Hux watched as they hauled Kylo away on a stretcher. His lips still tingled and the knowing, teasing, sometimes pitying and sometimes even fucking _congratulatory_ glances from all the base’s personnel were burning thousand little holes into his back. It was infuriating.

He and Kylo didn't share a kiss during that mad ride in the TIE Silencer, between Kylo trying to suck out Hux's brain through his cock and Hux trying to slice his throat there wasn't time for such intimacies. And if Hux lately had, hypothetically of course, completely hypothetically entertained the thought of kissing Kylo Ren, he always imagined something… well, the scenarios varied - from soft pecks between whispered words to furious, bruising kisses tasting with blood - but he never, never imagined it involving so much dirt, and so much bloody _audience._

Leave it to Kylo fucking Ren to steal the show.

The airstrip slowly cleared, a crane rolled in to take the wreck for repairs, ground crew set too work on removing the dead repulsorlifts from the tarmac. Hux imagined going to the infirmary and ask to see Kylo, shuddered with horror at the inevitable embarrassment and went instead to see what could be salvaged from the TIE.

Two hours later he was interrupted in the middle of a swearing streak by a loud clearing of someone's throat behind him.

It was General Organa. Well, Hux figured she, being the wife of Han Solo, had definitely heard worse.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Could we go somewhere quiet to speak? I have news for you.”

Hux nodded, took off his tool jacket and followed Leia into a quieter corner of the hangar. Several chairs and a water dispenser stood there at the disposal of mechanics on their breaks.

“It has to do with why my son got so delayed on his return,” Leia started once they both were seated, both more or less just on the edge of their seats though Hux suspected Leia’s reason wasn’t nervousness; it was just how she was, always ready to get up and run.

“I had nothing to do with it, if you’re referencing the rumours,” he said quickly.

She chuckled. “You’re more wrong than you think. But I should start at the beginning. I cannot of course give you the classified details…”

Hux nodded modestly. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get those details if he wanted. Poe was privy to all high command meetings and where Poe went, BB-8 went - and the two base resident gingers struck an alliance based on shared feelings for reckless, idiotic hotshots. Hux always had a way with droids.

“He was on his way back home when he decided to take a detour to Arkanis.”

Hux tensed. “Arkanis,” he repeated carefully. He hadn’t heard that word in many years. It didn’t lose any of its unpleasant aftertaste on his tongue.

“There wasn’t very much we knew about your early life… Ben of course knew about your father but that couldn’t be all. He decided he’d go looking for the rest of your family.”

“My mother is dead,” Hux said, slowly, patiently, as if trying to enforce this information on Organa’s mind.

“Or so I prefer to think,” he added with bitterness that surprised even him.

“Unfortunately, she really is,” Leia confirmed it simply and handed Hux a holochip. Hux looked at it as if it might sting him, still reeling with the sudden confirmation of what he’d suspected - what he kept comforting himself with - for all those years.

“Ben found and spoke to some people who still lived there and remembered the time. After the evacuation of the Academy, when the fleeing Imperial ships carried your father and you away, your mother apparently tried to contact the Rebel Alliance and offer them information - if they would help her get you back.”

Hux tentatively took the holochip. “This is the message she recorded?” He couldn’t remember his mother’s face, and he never saw any holo of her. Brendol had destroyed them all if they ever existed in the first place. Now he was almost afraid to look. Afraid that his face wouldn’t be anything like hers, that he’d taken too much after… but no. She didn’t want to let him go. She couldn’t have hated him...

“She was caught by one of the remaining Imperials during her attempt to transmit it,” Leia said. “The eyewitness Ben spoke to told him she was killed on the spot. I am sorry, Armitage.”

Hux felt sick to his bones. His father never told him. Of course, she was a traitor in his eyes… even a memory, a careless word about her could undermine Brendol’s bid for the position of the Supreme Leader. Not that he enjoyed it for long…

“Thank you,” he said. It sounded so shallow, so insufficient to his ears.  

“Ben tried to look for any living relatives of hers,” Leia continued. “But the Imperial nostalgia on Arkanis is strong, and someone sold him out to the First Order. He managed to escape, spent a day hiding in an asteroid field - that’s why the Silencer looks as if a bunch of kids made it into their target practice for throwing rocks - and came back when it was safe.”

So much in Hux’s life had changed, so much of his worldview had changed too. Hux knew that if he spent one more minute ruminating on it his head might burst. Better put it all aside for now and concentrate on the present.

Leia’s whole demeanour also abandoned the gentle, reflective compassion and took on a harder edge. She leaned forward in her chair, mouth drawing in a stern line.

“Armitage, I understand this is very hard for you, and you can take all the time you need. But eventually, I need you to tell my son, _clearly_ , that he is to stop trying to make amends between the two of you. I cannot let one of my best pilots be a liability to our operations just because he’s projecting his feelings on someone who doesn’t want them.”

Hux startled and then took a long breath in to settle his thoughts before he said:

“I am sorry ma’am but I cannot tell him that. Because I _do_ want them.” It sounded so simple when he said it, not nearly as monumental and biting-off-his-tongue-worthy as he’d imagined it.

“Please, may I see him?” he asked before he’d lose his bravado.

He didn’t see Leia’s little smile as she watched him go.

 

*

 

Hux’s bravado lasted him exactly to the infirmary door. Now he stood there, his hand raised to the entry control panel, and a voice in his head kept him from pushing it by telling him how stupid this idea was.

“Hux? Please, come in...” came a muffled voice from inside.

 _Oh right, sneaking around bloody Force users_ , Hux thought. But it was the tone of Kylo’s voice - subdued and unsure, trailing off towards the end as if Kylo ran out of courage before finishing the invitation that made Hux gather his lost spirits and walk through the door.

Kylo was sitting on the bed, loose ugly green shirt doing little to hide the bruising along his collarbones and wrists. His hair was washed, skin cleaned from grime. Fresh black bacta plaster bisected his cheek and Kylo kept his face down and away from Hux. His restless fingers kept plucking at the rough fabric of the blanket folded over his knees.

All Hux’s prepared words seemed insufficient now. He walked the few metres between the door and the bed in silence. There was no chair or anything to sit on besides a battered bedside table that was probably made of old cargo container. Hovering above Kylo and effectively talking just to the crown of his head seemed unbearably awkward so Hux did the only little less awkward thing and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“So…” Hux began at the same time when Kylo blurted out: “I’m sorry.”

 _For kissing me?_ A tiny part of Hux’s mind squeaked but he silenced it before he could embarrass himself.  

“I’m so sorry, Hux,” Kylo carried on, determined to get it all out in one breath, perhaps afraid Hux would stop him any moment.

“I took you away from everything you knew and I didn’t think how alone you’d be. I had family, Luke… I thought I could at least find your family, but I failed at that, too.”

Hux thought of Leia who welcomed him with the same warmth as her own son, of Han’s _kid_ still ringing in his ears, of Rose and all the others pilots and mechanics all treating him with the casual, every-day kindness, exactly the same they showed to each other...

“I am sorry, too.”  

Before Kylo could protest - Hux could see the words rising to his lips - he put his palm over Kylo’s scar. Kylo flinched, trying to hide - but Hux brought his other hand up to hold his chin.  He traced the scar with gentle caress, smoothed the hair away from Kylo’s temple, brow, wiped off a tear that clung to a corner of his eye.

“You don’t have to feel sorry about this,” Kylo said. “I deserved it.”

“You did,” Hux agreed. “And I would try to stab you again if you tried to kidnap me again. And it doesn’t make us even. But I am still sorry, and I wanted to tell you… you don’t disgust me, or scare me. You don’t have to hide it before me.”

“It’s ugly,” Kylo mumbled. “And it’s not an honour. Rey was wrong. I didn’t get it for saving your life, I got it for ruining it.”

“These things tend to change with context.”

Hux let his hand slide down Kylo’s shoulder, then arm, feeling curiously the bandages under the sleeve, until he let it rest loosely over Kylo’s hand. He felt the slight tremble of fingers beneath his own.

“There was no justification for you kidnapping me when you did it. But then Finalizer fell and… I have changed I think. I no longer wish to be the man who would happily go down with it.”

“I am glad,” Kylo whispered. He must have seen Hux was getting along just fine. And it was not Kylo’s doing. Kylo might have given him a chance but it was Hux who took it, worked hard, gained respect of his friends and proved himself worthy of it.

“I’m glad you came back safely,” Hux replied. It was a pitiful quarter of everything he felt but he couldn’t do grand displays like the one Kylo pulled off on the tarmac, and he wasn’t one for heart-rendering speeches either.

Kylo removed his hand from Hux’s loose hold and clasped them in his lap. His entire posture was rigid, uncomfortable, and Hux couldn’t tell if it was shame, regret, consternation or something else. All those mixed messages irked him.

“Why did you kiss me, in front of all those people, when in private you don’t even want to hold my hand?” he asked. It came out sharply than he intended and for a moment he regretted he’d never grown a soft spot, that all he was made of were sharp edges and abrasive planes.

The tips of Kylo’s ears visible through his hair were red now.

“I thought I was going to die. And then - for a moment - I thought I did.” He chuckled in a rare spark of humour and was back to his forlorn gloom before Hux could enjoy it.

“It was selfish of me,” he admitted.

“It was incredibly over-dramatic but I shouldn’t expect anything less from someone with Skywalker blood,” Hux joked. Kylo didn’t laugh. Belatedly, Hux remembered that Skywalker blood was the crux of Kylo’s issues.

“You’re in trouble for the unauthorised detour,” Hux said, trying to cover for the misstep. Kylo shrugged.

“No more trouble than usual. And it was worth it. Hux, I’d do anything for you-” he bit his lip - “for what I did to you,” he corrected himself.

Hux would have preferred if he didn’t. Perhaps Leia was right.

“You should stop trying to make up for what happened between us,” Hux told him.

Kylo hung his head low and then nodded to himself, shoulders heaving on a silent sigh. He turned away from Hux and slowly, with awkward shifting, got out of bed. It must have pained him to move. He stood by the window and his voice was suspiciously wet and forcibly even when he said:

“Yes, you did tell me. Apologies not wanted.” The view from the infirmary was bleak, blocked by a grassy mould of another hangar right in front of it.

“That was the last one, I have nothing left to try. I understand you won't ever feel about me the way I feel about you-”

The soles of Hux’s shoes were soft and so Kylo didn’t hear him approaching until Hux wrapped his arms around him. He slotted his body against Kylo’s back, mindful of the bandages visible like bumps under the loose shirt, and cut off Kylo's tirade by pressing a soft kiss to Kylo’s nape.

“Apologies not needed. You’re forgiven.”  

This time, Kylo sobbed aloud. Hux took his hand again and Kylo lifted them both, entwining his fingers with Hux’s slender and paler ones and bringing them to his mouth for a kiss, hot and wet with tears.

“And you understand nothing, and neither do I, apparently, because I... feel the same. About you.”

Hux kept speaking into the skin of Kylo’s nape, feeling the softness of it there with his cheek.

“We're doing everything backwards,” he mused. “First we had sex, then we kissed… and I don’t even know how to call you… Can’t we just start again? Properly?”

Kylo released his hand for long enough to rub at his eyes with his sleeve and then he turned around, facing him. That crushing guilt weighing him down was mostly gone, and his eyes were bright and liquid again, somehow reflecting all the facets of this fascinating man that Hux couldn’t ignore if he tried: youth, honesty, rashness, kindness, compassion, even a bit of that old cockiness, and above all, so much love that Hux thought he could drown in it.

Kylo extended his hand and chewed on his lip for a moment.

“Hi. I’m Kylo Ren. That’s who I am now. But sometimes you might hear me called Ben Solo of the New Republic.”

Hux tried to suppress the grin that fought to take over his face, and when he caught the unabashed joy in Kylo’s eyes at the sight, he gave up and smiled freely. Kylo’s eyes widened, awed as if he saw the sunrise for the first time in his life. Hux licked his lips and took the offered hand in a firm handshake.

“Nice to meet you, Kylo. I’m Armitage Hux, of the Resistance.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art for this chapter was drawn by the amazing [theearlgreyalpha!](http://theearlgreyalpha.tumblr.com/) So much thanks!

**Author's Note:**

> Updates +/- weekly. Comments are most appreciated!
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://sinningsquire.tumblr.com/) for more kylux :)


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